AGRICULTURE--MORE HINTS

(SEE PAGES 198 AND 264.)

2179. _Small Farms._--Never have more land in culture than can be _well cultivated_.

2180. _Be a Farmer_, not a mere earth-scraper, lazily scratching up sufficient earth to destroy the face of the soil, and throw seed away, or you will always have to scratch hard for a living. But make your farm a source of pride, and it will surely become a source of profit. Make the object to be not to have _many_, but _rich_ acres.

2181. _Turnip Fly_ may be expelled by the use of fish-oil, one or two gallons to the acre.

2182. _Bone Dust._--An English proverb says, "One ton of bone-dust saves the importation of ten tons of grain."

2183. _Corn._--Sprinkling with salt and water will check the weevil. Of all the grains, corn is the most valuable, taking into view quantity and price. Soaking the seed in a solution of saltpetre keeps off the worm, and largely increases the crop.

2184. _Rye_ is more thrifty on soil of a dry, sandy, or gravely texture, if well manured, and winters best when sown early.

2185. _Lime_, as manure for wheat, is of great importance Use about three bushels to the acre.

2186. _Fields._--As a general rule, with but few exceptions, square large fields are more advantageous than small irregular ones, requiring less fence, and being more easily watered, manured, plowed, and harvested.

2187. _Musty Grain_ is made sweet by putting it in boiling water, (double the quantity of grain), letting it cool in the water, and then drying it well. Skim the water.

2188. _A Single Weed_ may draw out the nourishment that would have given fullness to half-a-dozen ears. To be free from taxes is far less important than to be free from weeds.

2189. _Fences._--Around each post hill the earth, to carry off the water, and char the end a few inches above the surface. Cedar fences last about 15 years, which should lead owners to inquire where the fences are to come from hereafter.

2190. _Manure._--Every farmer can double the quantity of his domestic or yard manure, with scarcely any additional expense. At least fifty per cent. of the nutritive properties of yard manure are lost by drenching of rains, excessive fermentation, and injurious application to soil.

2191. _Plow deep._--Let a farmer examine the extent and depth to which the roots of grain, in a loose and favorable soil, will spread, and he will cease to wonder at the failure of a crop where the subsoil has never been stirred by the plow.

2192. _Green vegetables_, when put under the soil and submitted to the process of decomposition, are efficacious in restoring exhausted soils.

2193. _Fertilizing._--Buckwheat and clover are striking instances of this power in green crops to fertilize soils, and both have been extensively used for this purpose.

2194. _Agriculture_ is worthy the most liberal patronage of our governments, state and national; it ought to be enlightened by a better (and thorough) education of the agricultural class.

2195. _Three Pillars of the State._--Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, stand together; but they stand together like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the centre, and that largest is agriculture.

2196. _The Civilizer._--Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. Man, without the cultivation of the earth, is in all countries a savage. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

2197. _Independence of Farmers._--We live in a country of small farms; a country, in which men cultivate with their own hands, their own fee-simple acres; drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit of independence, and manly freedom from the ground they plow.

2198. _The Glory of Agriculture._--"The task of working improvements on the earth is much more delightful than all the vain glory which can be acquired by ravaging it with the most uninterrupted career of conquests."--_Washington._

(SEE PAGE 289.)

2199.--_Treat Domestic Animals kindly and tenderly._--Domestic animals of all kinds from a horse down to a chicken, should be treated with gentleness and mildness; men or boys who are rash and bad-tempered, ought not to be permitted to have charge of them or to interfere with their management. Animals that are kept in constant fear of suffering never thrive well, and they often become vicious and intractable by unkind and cruel treatment.

2200. _Keep Stock in good condition._--An animal may be kept short of food in the latter part of the fall or first of winter, at a small saving of food but at a loss in the condition of the animal.

2201. _Stables and Food._--Provide comfortable sheds and stables. Remember that a _want of comfort is always a waste of flesh_. Give a sufficiency of food and drink, with great regularity. A meal ten minutes later than the usual time, causes the animal to fret, and fretting lessens flesh.

2202. _Drink and Litter._--Most animals will drink several times a day, and should therefore have it as often as they want it. They should have plenty of clean litter as often as needed. With such management, there will be an almost incredible saving of food.

_Tight Stables_ should always be ventilated. The breath and manure from animals always causes impure air.

2203. _Oxen._--Being well-mated, oxen are more easily trained; and the more easily to effect this, much self-denial on the part of the driver, much coolness of temper, more training by motion and less by voice, may be highly advantageous to man and beast.

2204. _To Select._--Adopt the practice of selecting best lambs every year, for stock. In a few years you have first-rate sheep. The same course will produce the same effects in every kind of animal.

2205. _Hogs._--_Food._--If pumpkins, roots, apples, or any of them be fed to fattening hogs with corn, the advantage will be salutary. Most of the food for swine should be cooked. Swine fatten much faster on fermented, than on unfermented food. Salt, charcoal, and once in a while sulphur, are excellent for hogs under all circumstances.

_Good Medicine._--When your hogs get sick, you know not of what, give them ears of corn, first dipped in tar, and then rolled in sulphur.

2206. _Bees._--(See p. 176).--Every farmer should keep bees; a few swarms to furnish honey for his own use, if no more. They toil with unremitting industry, asking but a full sweep of the wing, and no monopoly. Every man, in either town or country, can keep bees to advantage.

2207. _Care of Bees in Winter._--A cold, dry, dark room, is the best winter-quarters for bees. They will consume less honey than if left on their summer stands, and will not be weakened by the loss of thousands, which, tempted out by the premature warmth, are caught by the cold winds, fall to the ground, and never rise again.

2208. "_Never kill a bee._"--The smoke of the _fungus maximus_, or common puff ball, when dried so as to hold fire, has a stupefying effect on the bees, and renders them as harmless as brimstone does, without any of its deadly effects.

2209. _Mignonette, Sweet._--Is especially mentioned as easily cultivated by drills in a garden, and is one of the finest and richest flowers in the world from which the honey-bee can extract its food.

2210. _Horses._--See page 199.

2211. _To cure Scratches on a Horse._--Wash the legs with warm strong soap-suds, and then with beef brine. Two applications will cure the worst case.

2212. _Bite of a Spider._--Catnip bruised and applied to the wound, is said to be a cure for the bite of a spider.

2213. _To preserve a Granary from Insects and Weasels._--Make the floor of Lombardy poplars.

2214. _To prevent the Creaking of a Door._--Rub a bit of soap on the hinges.

2215. _Sulphur_ is valuable in preserving grapes, plants, &c., from insects.

2216. _Salt_ is really necessary to horses, cattle, and sheep, and they should be supplied with it at regular stated intervals throughout all seasons of the year.

2217. _Manure_, on a wet soil, produces but half its effect; and gypsum, that grand stimulant of dry soils, on a wet one is useless.

2218. _Hen-House_ should be warm in winter, well-ventilated, white-washed, and kept clean. For the floor, use slaked lime, fine gravel or ashes, or burnt oyster shells. (See page 200.)

2219. _A single dozen_ fowls, properly attended, will furnish a family with more than 2,000 eggs in a year, and 100 full-grown chickens for fall and winter stores.

2220. _Expense._--The expense of feeding the dozen fowls will not amount to 18 bushels of Indian corn. They may be kept in cities as well as in the country, and will do as well shut up the year round as to run at large, with proper care.

2221. _A Fact._--Eggs the nearest to roundness produce females, and those pointed at one end always produce males.

2222. _For Fattening._--_Boiled_ Indian, wheat and barley, is better than oats, rye, or buckwheat. One-third is gained by _boiling_.

2223. _Eggs_, little boiled or poached, in small quantity, convey much nourishment; the yolk only should be eaten by invalids.

2224. _Salt for Poultry._--Salt is good for water-fowls, but death to land fowls and birds.

2225. _Salt for Pigeons._--Pigeons are fond of salt, and it keeps them in health. Lay a large heap of clay near the house, and let the salt-brine that may be done with in the family be poured upon it.

2226. _To Fatten Fowls in a short time._--Mix together ground rice well scalded with milk, and add some coarse sugar. Feed them with this in the day-time, but not too much at once; let it be pretty thick.

2227. _Pork cured._--Soon as cool enough to cut, and before it freezes, pack a clean cask full, with plenty of salt on all sides of each piece. Fill up with water, taking care, by means of a large stone, to keep the pork under the pickle, and covered from flies, in a cellar. Never boil pickle.

2228. _Pork Feeding._--It is a well-ascertained fact, that more meat will be made on half the weight of corn, if ground and made into mush instead of being fed whole.

2229. _In Smoking Hams_, &c., be careful not to have the fire too high, or the smoke-house top tight. It is best done in an upper story, to which the smoke is conveyed in tubes, from oak or maple chips in the cellar. (See p. 324.)

2230. _Hollow Horn._--Where supposed to exist, feed half-peck potatoes twice a week, and treat your cattle kindly in food and shelter.

2231. _Sheep_ must be fed well, kept dry, have salt often, and pure air, and be grazed in hilly stony pastures.

2232. _Cows._--Those who wish their cows to give large messes of milk in the winter season, should give them warm drink. The extra trouble will be more than repaid in the increased quantity of milk. (See pp. 285-6.)

2233. _Wild Onion_ may be destroyed by cultivating corn, plowing and leaving the field in its plowed state all winter.

2234. _Remember._--The great rule in relation to animals holds perfect in its application to vegetables; breed only from the best animals; _defects and imperfections have always a tendency to propagate themselves, and are always, in a greater or less degree, transmitted_.

2235. _Wheat_ shoots strongest when there is an interval between the time of plowing and sowing, but _barley_ is most vegetative when sown immediately after the plow.

2236. _Grease Wheels._--Fifty parts, by weight, of pulverized black lead, 50 of lard, 50 of soap, and 5 of quicksilver. Rub the lard and mercury first together, then the lead and soap. If well mixed, it is invaluable.

2237. _Plants_, when drooping, are revived by a few grains of camphor.

2238. _Flowers_ beginning to fade, can be restored by putting the stems in scalding water.

2239. _Bacon Hams in Summer._--Pack in a barrel, in clean dry ashes or charcoal; head up the barrel and put it where it is dry, and as cool as possible.

2240. _Timber_ cut in the spring and exposed to the weather _with the bark on_, decays much sooner than that _cut in the fall_.

2241. _In Feeding_ with corn, 60 lbs. ground goes as far as 100 lbs. in the kernel.

2242. _Apples._--Experiments show apples to be equal to potatoes to improve hogs, and decidedly profitable for fattening cattle.

2243. _Pears_ are greatly improved by grafting on the mountain ash.

2244. _Rats_ and other vermin are kept away from grain by a sprinkling of garlic when packing the sheaves.

2245. _Wet Land._--Money skillfully expended in drying land, by draining or otherwise, will be returned with ample interest.

2246. _Grass._--Sweet and nutritious grass gives a richness and flavor to milk, attainable from no other source.

2247. _Curing Fodder._--Bundles may be so placed around centre-poles as to form a hollow-stack, having a foundation of brush, sticks, &c., admitting a circulation of air that will thoroughly cure fodder in the shade.

2248. _Turnips_ of small size have double the nutritious matter that large ones have.

2249. _Ruta Baga_ is the only root that increases in nutritious qualities as it increases in size.

2250. _In transplanting_ trees, the hole should not be proportioned to the extent of the roots _as they are_, but to their extent as they _may be_ and _should be_.

2251. _Toads_ are the very best protection of cabbages against lice.

2252. _Peach Trees_ are protected from hard winters by covering the roots a foot deep with straw, in _January_, after the ground has become thoroughly frozen, which keeps the frost in the ground, and so prevents the sap from starting until the Spring is fairly opened.

2253. _Save your Fire Wood._--Mr. Madison, in his Notes of Agriculture, says, "Of all the errors in our rural economy, none perhaps is to be so much regretted, because none so difficult to be repaired, as the excessive and injudicious destruction of fire-wood."

2254. _Sorrel_ may be killed out by lime, while ashes have no effect on it.

2255. _Shumac_ or _Sumac_, a poisonous shrub or plant, which grows wild in abundance, and frequently where nothing else will, is used for dyeing in England, at the rate of thirteen thousand tons per annum. It might be made a source of profit to our farmers.

(SEE PAGE 291.)

2256. _Kitchen Garden._--This is one of the most important parts of general domestic economy, whenever the situation of a house will permit a family to avail themselves of its assistance, in aid of butcher's bills.

2257. It is, indeed, much to be regretted that small plots of ground, in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis more especially, are too often frittered away into shrubberies and baby gardens, when they might more usefully be employed in raising vegetables for the family, during the week-day residence in town, than wasting their sweetness on the smoky air in all the pride of lilac, hollyhock, and bachelors' buttons, to be merely smelled to, by the whole immigrating household on the day of rest.

2258. With a little care and attention, a kitchen-garden, though small, might be rendered not only useful, but in fact, as ornamental as a modern grass carpet; and the same expense incurred to make the ground a labyrinth of sweets, might suffice to render it agreeable to the palate, as well as to the olfactory nerves, and that even without offending the most delicate optics.

2259. It is only in accordance with our plan to give the hint, and to record such novel points as may facilitate the proposed arrangement.

2260. It is one objection to the adoption of a kitchen garden in front of the dwelling, or in sight of the family apartments, that its very nature makes it rather an eye-sore than otherwise at all seasons.

2261. This, however, is an objection that may be readily got over by a little attention to neatness and good order, whilst the plants themselves, if judiciously attended to, and the borders sown or planted with ranunculus, polyanthus, mignionette, &c., in succession, will really be ornamental.

2262. But then, in cutting the plants for use, the business must be done neatly, all useless leaves cleared from the ground, the roots no longer wanted taken up, and the ravages of insects to be guarded against by sedulous extirpation. It will also be found a great improvement, where space will admit of it, to surround the beds with neat espaliers, with fruit trees, or even gooseberry and currant bushes trained along them, instead of these being suffered to grow in a state of ragged wildness.