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time in which to rest and recruit his faculties, and where before anything it is necessary that he should be furnished with the least cumbersome and the most easily digested food which is at tainable. It is a well-known fact that hay cut too short in the chaff-cutter gives horses indigestion, and therefore nowadays inch and half-inch preferred; but as the chaff-cutter, though cutting the substances, docs not abrade and tear them, it cannot act in the setting free of the hidden nour ishment which the hay and straw contain.—Gar dener's Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette . SOt'THERX CIXTIYATGR—COKX PLASTER, kc. Editors Southern Cultivator As one of your subscribers, please let me thank you for omitting in the last No. of the Cultivator, your little tales. However short and beautiful, it seems to me they are out of place. The planter seeks an agricultural work—to know how to im prove his farm and make money. Your barrel roller and bull sweep have been of more impor tance to me, than the lives of merchants, engi neers, poets, and commissioners of agriculture, I’ve read elsewhere. Without the first, I could not have successfully used the cotton planter, and without the sweep, in all probability I should this day have owned but one or, instead of 10 head 1 last spring broke, with great case, some of them 5 and 0 year old bulls, and which have done most of my heavy hauling since- March, without eating .any grain. The account of the sweep was badly given. lat first put the bows on top, instead of under the sweep. They were too low—pine sap lings broken. I felled oaks and put green black gum sweeps on the tenon of the green oak stump. Posts 5 feet in the ground even, did not answer for some of the bulls and steers. If you wish it, as soon as I have leisure, I will -write an account of howl managed, for the Cultivator — catching, handling, breaking, Ac., Ac. We need corn planters about here veiy much. Can you recommend any particular machine?— If I can’t do better, I shall nail strips of leather underneath and across the slits or opening in Dow Law, and drop 1 and 2 grains, every 3 or 4 inches, and cross and cut out with Thill plows at Ist working. R. Graliamville, S. C., Oct. 1870. We cannot agree entirely with our cor respondent as to the propriety of omitting the “ fire side department” of the Cultivator. Whilst SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. our leading object is to assist the farmer in the practical opciations of the farm, we cannot ig nore the wife or daughter and must contribute a little at least to their entertainment —for at last the farmer himself is working for this object.— lie strives to make money that he may beautify the home of his wife or adorn her person with beautiful fabrics, or place within her reach the treasures of art and literature. Disguise it as we may, the fields and the workshops of the world are all tributary to the comfort and pleasure of woman. We should be very glad to have your experi ence with the sweep for breaking oxen ; it may save others the trouble you had. The Whitners Planter is said to drop corn well, we cannot speak from experience however.— Eds. So. Cult. SAVING SWEET POTATOES. Editors Southern Cultivator.— lt is rath er late in the season, but I will give you what I consider the best method of saving sweet pota toes. As soon as the leaves are a little bit with frost they should be dug. The first thing we do is to cut and pull up a good supply of corn stalks, and prepare the beds for receiving the potatoes as they are taken out of the ground. Raise the ground a little for each bed and cover with stalks. In ploughing out the potatoes and load ing them in a wagon, take care to bruise or skin them us little as possible. Put say from fifteen to twenty-five bushels in a hill, build them up in as sharp a conical pile as possible. Set corn stalks around sufficient to keep the dirt from them, and cover the hill with dirt tramping it around tight a foot and a half deep on the sides, two feet on the top. The grand object being to make the hill air tight. Then no matter what the weather is, don’t open them in less than three weeks—then open if needed for use, but be care ful to keep them well closed. The best plan is take out enough to last a family two weeks at a time. The plan of taking out every day as you use them will not do, it gives them too much air. If the hills are covered sufficiently deep and smoothed off with the spade, they will not need a shelter. By letting them remain in the hacks until the fifteenth of April, and then taking them out and putting in boxes and covering with dry sand, they may be saved until the following September, as sound as when dug. YORK. October 18 th, 1870. An agreeable person is one who agrees with you. 431