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2 Sheep for the South. In rebuilding the pro«|>erity of our Southern States t here is no branch of industry calculated to contribute more certainly than sheep husbandry on a small scale. We do not wish to be un derstood as advocating sheep raising exclusively; but we do insist on this industry forming a link in that chain of diversified forming which is the basis of an independent and lasting prosperity. We have uniformly and energetically thrown the whole weight of our in fluence, since the war, against the al most exclusive cotton culture which has well nigh bankrupted our section; but we have never advised the abandon ment of cotton, On the contiary, we have constantly urged the farmer to make it the main feature of his market crop, being careful to diversify his energies to the extent of making his farm self-sustaining. In this diversity sheep should have prominent places. No farmer throughout the cotton re gion should be without his flock often, twenty, or fifty head, according to size and location of the farm. All experienced formers well know that simply purchasing the flocks and driving them home, without further at tention will result in failure and loss. Tlie effect will be profitable or not ac cording to the care and intelligence bestowed upon it, and those who are not prepared or disposed to bestow these had best let it alone. The intelligent farmer will first de termine the number of sheep he is pre pared to care for. If he has pasturage for twenty fiead only, he will not go beyond that number. This question settled, he will next direct his inquiries to the breed best adapted to his locali ty and the wants of his market. If he is s > situated that the fleece forms the item of profit, he will select the breed the wool of which is most valuable. If, on the other hand, his market offers greater profits for mutton than wool, then he will select the breed most pro ductive of mutton. In either easel economy will suggest that he buy the common native ewes ot the country, , i,t-/0 UfJftO j the breed desired by carefully selecting and purchasing such bucks ns will lead j to the end in view. Those who have noexperience will be astonished at the rapid progress the proper care will make in transforming a flock of common ewes into beautiful Merino, or Cots wolds, or Southdowns, or whatever breed may be desired. Seven-eighths constitutes what is termed a “thorough bred," and a little calculation will show how short a time is required to bring sheep to this point of purity. Now as to the profits. The increase ! of sheep with proper care is never es timated with any degree of certainty because of the great variation depend ent upon breed, pasturage, care, Ac., while the price is equally unfixed. The farmer who gathers up his sheep but once a year, at shearing time, gets two to four pounds per head, for which he realizes from eighteen to thirty cents, while the farmer who pastures and cares for his flocks gets a yield ot ten to eighteen pounds per head, for which he realizes thirty to seventy-five cents per pound. In the first case, the profit, though trifling, is clear, and in the last it is subject to the charges of invest ment, pasturage, feed, care, Ac. In the last instance, however, the flock is entitled to a credit for its fertilizing i deposits on the form, an item of the first importance to both sections of our country, and one that is not sufficiently appreciated. The profits in almost every instance are larger than those of most all branches of farm industry, and are not to bo dispensed with by the skillful husbandman. —South Land. Improvement in Farmers. —The Mark Lane Express in an article on fanners associations, says: “There is nothing more noticeable when review ing the progress of Agriculture during the last quarter of a century than the improvement which has characterized the conduct of our public meetings or social gatherings. There was a time when the long clay pipe, the somewhat boisterous stave, and the “hot stopping" were regarded as the chief inducements for getting'farmers together. But these days have gradually passed away, and with some experience of other large assemblies, we are inclined to think that nowhere will men as a rule BANNER OF THE SOUTH AND PLANTERS’ JOURNAL. keep closer to the point or carry themselves more becomingly than the occupiers of land when they draw into a focus at a .Society’s show or a Club's discussion. More information has been disseminated, more intelli gence developed by such a means than through any other cause which could be spoken to. By the further a'd of a good reliable report this system of mu tual advantage comes to be almost in finitely extended. Many a man who would fight shy of a regular essay, al though he found the pages ready “cut" to his hand, will eagerly turn to see what his next door neighbor had to say, or a famous agriculturist to offer on the merits of the principle under consider ation. The Domestic Food Supply. We have rested all our lives on two propositions, with an invincible faith, that knew no doubting until yesterday. The first was ami is that North Caro lina will never run short of herrings ; and the second was, (but not is) that the supply of eggs and chickens will never tail in Georgia. This pure and childlike faith in which we were reared from the earliest infancy has now failed us, at least in respect to one half of it, and we know not where to look for another creed. Like a ship at sea without compass or rudder we are drilling on the quick sands of universal incredulity. Gentlemen, think of it for one moment. For many generations a hide-covered Georgia cart coming to town has been a synonym for eggs and chickens. You never thought of asking what the man on the mule or the woman in the cart had for sale— you knew it was eggs anil chickens. And what is more—to come down to particulars—you could almost tell the month of the year from a glance at the load. There was no need of look ing into the Almanac in those days. Just look into the cart and the relative i supply of chicks and eggs, and the size and development of the former, would tell you the month fijoiu L'hti.sL. mas to Decerftber again. But ail this is gone—played out— and now it is our solemn and mournful duty to announce that Georgia, or at least, tins part of it, is dependent for its supply even of eggs, on Tennessee ; and not on East Tennessee merely, but, perhaps, the bulk of our eggs comes from Nashvilie. It is a fact, the grocers are bringing eggs from Nash ville, and so soon as the railroads get running express trains, will, doubtless, import them from Cincinnati, Chicago and St Louis. The other day we asked a man what part of the food on his table was pro duced in Georgia? and after thinkimg the question over, he replied—sweet potatoes, milk and eggs. Now he must strike off two of the trio. Sweet potatoees are gone and the eggs come from Nashville. With a patent re frigerating car, milk will soon be brought here from the Northwestern prairies. In the name of all that is good and gracious, where are we Georgians coming to? The other day we learned from the President of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, that the road, among its western importations, since the Ist of January last, had brought into Georgia a little fraction short of 29,000 bales of hay, of a probable average value of five dollars per bale—that is to say, a hundred and forty-five thousand dol lars worth of hay in three months of the eurent year. On the same day we had from the form of Col. Lampkin, in Monroe county, an average sample of clover from a thirty acre field, sown last September—showing a growth of four feet, and a crop which will certainly yield next month over -1,000 pounds of hay to the acre—the first cutting. The history of clover growing in Georgia 1 the last four years, in our opinion, de monstrates that we can beat Ohio in I the production of hay, and yet this ! pitiable spectacle of unthriftiness is 1 presented. ; Is it possible for any country to j prosper where the food of man and beast, even down to forage is so gen ! erally imported from abroad? If it is, |we are entirely mistaken. Sometimes j we an led to hope that affairs in this j reaper are gradually mending outside ] the to ns in Georgia, but if so, how do the towns show yearly a smaller 1 and smaller proportion of Georgia I raised food in market—less beef, mnt j ton, porlf, poultry and eggs, and even I fish and game of Georgia production ? , — Macon, Telegraph and Messenger. ' Immigration to the South. —ln a previous article we indicated Southern Europe as the most likely field for the South to seek that immigration which is so imperatively needed for the restoration ot her exhausted labor. But the South must do much more than seek abroad in order to enconnige a substantial immigration of a thrifty and useful class. She must oiler adequate inducements at home, and these inducements must be such as will compete with the zealous, determined, and intelligent efforts made by the States of the Northwest, their railroads and land agencies, to keep the tide of population flowing in their direction as it has hitherto done. Land must be eheajiened to immigrants; labor and good wages assured them ; and es pecially must they feel sure that they will enjoy that perfect sociale quality that is so large an element in the inducements which actuate the European proletaire when he abandons his old home and ancient associations and customs for a new home in the untried West. If the planters of flic Carolina*, Georgia and Virginia, instead of encouraging the appointment of jioliticians as “State emigration agents,” were to form themselves into “homestead societies,” subscribing laud instead of money, and guaranteeing to incoming labor small farms at nominal prices, the houses which are to lie built and paid for out of the wages of the im migrants, they would not only procure labor, but that very kind of permanent, settled, domesticated labor which they themselves most need, and which will be most useful in restoring the State to a healthy condition. Let it be known to the thy tty peasantry of the agricul tural pqlts of Italy that a married man, bjvguing to the South, can obtain lat oiijgAiitarm of twenty or thirty with a lipnsc imon it for his nmuftdiaSoccupancy, allof which he can make his own free-simple property by the labor of five years, and an important immigration will be at once secured. The essence of the matter is that the South must not invite a peasantry, nor a tenantry, but a yeoman class of small proprietors, who will identify them selves with the best interests of the country, and becomo at once an indus trial resource, the backbone of con servatism, and the bulwark of liberty. And all this the Southern people can do, now. at once, and efficiently, with out putting their hands in their pockets for a dollar, and by their own in dividual unaided personal efforts.— Washington (D. C.) Patriot. Noxious Insects. —Young cabbage plants, after being transplanted, are frequently cut off at the stem by a black grub, which lodges in the ground. Whenever that is observed, search around the root of the plants, cut off, and you will find the grub a quarter of an inch under the surface, and kill it. If it is not there, it will be on the next plant to it, and near by there will be another. They are always in pairs, and near to each other. There is a small black flea in vast numbers, which eats off the leaves of young cabbages, both when they have just come up from seeds and after being transplant ed. If the plants are lightly dusted over with fresh slacked lime for two mornings, while they are wet with dew, the lime will kill or drive off the fleas, and the plants will thrive. There is a greenish, mealy louse that attacks cab bages when half, or nearly full grown, frequently covering the whole plant. A dusting ot fresh lime, for two morn ings, over the plants while wet with dew, will kill all the intruders. A large, green grub, with black bauds around its body, which devours the leaves of carrots, celery, parsnip and parsley. It is slow in motion, and can be gathered with the hands and killed. .Six thousand acres of tobacco, it is estimated, were grown within 1 j miles of Edgerton, llock county Wisconsin, the past season. A cow in Dover, Tenn., excites the envy of her companions in fly-time. She has two tails. Distinguishing Ediih.e Mushrooms. —A writer in the English Mechanic gives what he considers to be an in valuable rule for distinguishing the true mushrooms from the poisonous species. He remarks, in the first place, that the true mushroom is invariably j found in rich open pastures, and never on or abont stumps or in woods; and, although a wholsome species sometimes occur in the latter localities, the writer considers it best to avoid their products. , Avery good point, in the second place, iis the peculiar intense purple-brown 1 color of the (pore-dust, from which the ripe mushroom derives this same color ' j (almost black) in the gills. To see j these Bpores, it is only necessary to re move the stem from the mushroom, and lay the upper portion, with the ! gills downward, on a sheet of writing paper, when the spores will be deposit ed, in a dark, impalpable powder, in a short time. Several dangerous species, j sometimes mistaken for the true, have | the spore urn-brown, or pale umber brown. In the true mushroom, again, there is a distinct and (rerfectcollar, quite en ! circling the stem, a little above the I middle, and the edge of the cap over- 1 ! laps the gills. In some poisonous spe | eies this collar is reduced to a mere ! fringe, and the overlapping margin is ! absent or reduced to a few white scales. ' Lastly, the gills never reach to nor touch the stem, theie being a space all around the top of the stem, where the ' gills are free from the stalk. 1 There are numerous varieties of tme mushrooms, all of them equally good for the table. Sometimes the' top is ; white and soft like kid leather; at other times it is dark-brown and scaly. Some | times, on being cut or broken, the J 1 mushroom changes color to yellow, or | even blood-red; at other times, no | change whatever takes place. To sum j j up, it is to be observed that the | mushroom always glows in pastures; always has dark, purple-brown spores; .always has a perfect encircling collar;j and always has gills which do not | touch the stem, and has a top with an j | overlapping edge. | —-feeejsiirf^ leated for testing trie gPiulWucss on mushrooms, we are informed that, . however much any particular fungus may resemble the eatable mushroom, j \ none are genuine nor safe the skin of ] which cannot he easily removed. When j taken by the thumb and finger at the overlapping edge, this skin will peel upward to the center, all around, leav-! 1 ing only a small portion of the center i of the crown to he pared off by the ! Wont> Ashes. —ln answer to several inquiries concerning the value of wood ashes as a manure, we reply that ashes from the wood of the hickory, sugar maple, elm, Ac., contain about 50 per cent, ot potash compounds, consisting chiefly of combinations with carbonic acid and silicia, while theashes of pine wood will rarely yield more than 20 per cent. Ashes saved from clearings often contain earth mixed with them, in gathering the remains from fires. When wood is used for burning lime.' i the ashes are often put into the market, j ■ largely mixed with substance. Sifted : ! coal ashes are sometimes used to adul | teratc wood ashes, and the fraud can ! hardly be detected by the eye. Leached ashes always retain a por ! tion of potash, usually slow in coinbi ! nation with silica or phosphoric acid, i These compounds are slowly soluble in ! water, and, therefore, are not removed in leaching, but they are valuable, es pecially to grain crops and grasses. Ashes, whether leached, or unleached, should never be suffered to go to waste. Even coal-ashes may be used to good advantage on stiff-clay soils. Their effect, however, is more mechanical than chemical. Sewerage System in Milan.— The sewerage system adopted in Milan, is recommended by Mr. Child, of Oxford, as being suitable for small towns and country villages. Its essential feature is the drainage of the houses into water-tight cess-pools, which are emp tied frequently, efficiently, and quite inoffensively, by means of a barrel cart, previously exhausted of air, and a i liwse. The barrel-cart then conveys j the sewage to a depot at a convenient distance, where all that is saleable is ■ sold to farmers, and the rest is manu i factured into a kind of dry artificial j guano. Many small towns and villages lie on dead flats or at the bottom of deep valleys, where ordinary sewerage works could not be established without an expensive provision for raising the sewage in order to render it available for irrigation. In such places the Milanese system might be carried-ont with ease, and at comparatively small outlay. A certain number of cess pools must be rendered water tight— a process not very expensive. One cess-pool would serve for several cot tages, and frequent emptying would be better than large sized of inclosures. Two barrel-carts must be procured, and these, with a small steam engine at the depot to work the air-pump, would to gether with about three men and two horses, form the whole of the apparatus required for testing the system or, a small but sufficient scale. On the day on which Mr. Child visited the depot near Milan, formers' were waiting there literally in scores, to obtain their sup ply of it; and he feels sure that, if landed proprietors or farmers were to give this system a trial in this country, they would find it worth adoption. How the Farmers Are Fleeced.— The Free Trade League puts forth an illustrated paper, showing up the iniquities of the present tariff law. It is called the People's Pictorial Tax- Payer. It contains facts and figures well calculated to startle the tax-pavers, who are each year robbed of more millions than the necessities of the Government require, for the benefit of a comparatively few Eastern manufactur ing capitalists. The illustration, show that Per cent. The farmer rises in the morning and puts on his flannel shirt taxed 55 His trousers taxed t>o His silk vest taxed 60 His coat—Cloth taxed GO Buttons taxed 40 Silk lining taxed 60 Padding taxed 150 Draws on his boots taxed 35 Sits down to, breakfast from a plate taxed 45 Knives and folks taxed 35 Reads a newspaper—Paper taxed... 20 With ink taxed 35 Au.l Wp" taxed . . . . . 25 Hitches his horse, shod with nails taxed 67 To a plow taxed 45 With trace chains taxed 100 And harness taxed 35 He goes to a village store and buys his wife a hankerehief taxed . 35 Shawl (I suppose woolen) taxed 200 Silk for a dress taxed 60 Hat taxed 40 Stockings (I suppose worsted) taxed v. 75 Boots taxed 35 Silk cravat taxed 60 Silk umbrella taxed 60 Needles taxed 35 Thread taxed 73 Pius taxed 35 Gloves taxed 50 Steel pens taxed 70 Rice taxed 82 Soap taxed 70 Candles taxed 40 Starch taxed 50 Paint taxed 25 Gets a ballot and votes for protec tion under the old flag ..... 100 Is it not strange, with these startling figuers staring them iu the face, that honest, truthful men can be still driven to the polls and made to vote the Radical ticket? Swindling os Commission.— Memphis, April 24.—Some weeks since a man calling himself Barns came here, rented a house on Shelby street, and put up an imposing sign “S. M. Webb & Cos., Commission Merchants.” In a few days several telegrams were received at the banks inquiring about the standing of the firm. The bankers thinking it was S. M. Webb & Cos., an old firm here, replied “ Webb & Cos. are perfectly re liable,” since when a large amount of goods from Louisville, Cincinnati, New York, Cleveland, Pittsburg and Wheel ing have arrived for the new firm, and, as has since transpired, were sold for what they would bring and Barns de camped. Several parties are now here trying to recover goods, principally meats, nails, and hardware. The amount involved is unknown, but will doubtless amount to many thousands. The following dialogue is said to have taken place in a school near Salisbury, England ; “Now, then, the first boy of the grammar class stand up 1” First boy stands np blushing : “Here I be zir.” Examiner : “ Well, my good boy can you tell me what vowels are ?” First boy: “Yowls, zir? Ees, of course I can.” Examiner: “Tell me, then, what are vowels ?” First boy, grinning at the simplicity of the * question : “ Yowls, zir ? Why, vowls be chickens !”