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22 AGRICULTURAL. = DANIEL LEE, HI. D M Editor. BATCEDAT JUNE 11, 1559. THE BTUDY OF GBASSES-NO. 2. In the Northern States, Timothy, (which is the Herds grass of New England) is the most popular plant grown for the purpose of making bay. The botanical name of this grass is Phle uin pratense ; and in general appearance, it bears a striking resemblance to meadow fox tail. One hundred parts of dry timothy liay, cut at the right time, and properly cured, contain 11-36 parts of muscle-forming elements, which make it equal, pound for pound, to sound com for sup porting working animals, when fed to horses, mules and oxen. Careful and trust-worthy anal yses, however, show that Orchard grass is as much better than Timothy for both growing voting stock, and working cattle, as oats are known to be better than corn. The exact dif ference is as 13.53 to 11.36, or about 20 per cent, in favor of Orchard grass. On low, moist, rich land, Timothy does well at the South; but on common up-land, it is very liable to be killed in summer weather when the ground is hot and dry. The soil should be made rich, which causes the plants to grow rapidly in the spring, and shade and cool the earth, so as to avoid that parching of the surface, and drying of the roots, so fatal to the crop. Some care and skill are re quired to get a good stand of grass, with well developed roots, just as some knowledge of cot ton or corn,-culture is valuable to obtain the best results from any given field in which these plants are cultivated. Timothy is a perennial, and ! grows as well in winter as our winter wheat and | rye. We cultivate this plant as we do wheat, sowing a peck of clean seed, not over one year old. to the acre. Several times seedsmen have deceived us in regard to the age of Timothy seed, and not one seed in a bushel germinated. Wheat will come up at three times the depth of grass seed; but even wheat is often covered so deeply by the plow as never to grow. No grass seed should ever be covered more than an inch deep; and a half inch is better. Indeed most farmers at the North sow early in the spriqg in wet weather, or on a light snow, and leave the seed on the surface of tlio ground. Clover .seed is sown id the same manner. The writer uses a light seed harrow, or a light brush, to cover the seed lightly. Some of the best farmers in Vir ginia sow Timothy, Orchard and Blue grass seed in June, at the last working of their com, ! and leave the seed on the surface to grow after the first rain, shaded from the sun by the com. Mr. Oscar Bailey of Clark county, Ga., will try this plan on fifteen acres this month; the result pf which will appear in this journal, Having had large experience in producing excellent hay from English grasses in Virginia, Mr. B. feels confident of success in Georgia. Twice since the Field and Fireside was started, has the edi tor seen a number of bales of Northern hay at the Athens depot, which was doubtless raised on land worth ono hundred dollars an acre; and then sent two hundred miles to New York mar ket, shipped thence seven or eight hundred miles to Charleston or Savannah, and finally carried two hundred and fifty miles by railroads to the elevated interior for consumption, where people live by laboring to kill grass in their corn and cotton fields, and where grass land may be bought at five dollars per acre 1 Is not such de pendence on the North for horse feed perfectly ridiculous ? If any one wants a good meadow yielding the very best hay in the world, let him employ Mr. Oscar Bailey to find the seed and make it for him. He will make a good roller at an expense not to exceed five dollars, for rolling in grass seed and wheat, and for crushing lumps of hard day, and leave it on the employer’s farm. There are a great many little things appertai ning to the economical production of every great staple which one can hardly describe on paper, and yet they are of some importance in practice. Hence years of actual experience and personal observation are indispensable to give one a fair knowledge of any branch of agriculture. As g case in poiut, some unacquainted with English grasses, except through books, may fear to sow their seeds lest the plants prove troublesome, like Bermuda and nut grass. Rest assured we shall recommqnd no such grass to our readers. They want grasses which can be got rid of as easily as wheat, oats, barley and rye, when a system of rotation of crops shall demand the breaking up of a meadow or pasture to raise a crop of cotton or corn. With grasses of this character the writter has been familiar from his childhood. How far they and clover will answer At the South is yet an open question; but if we ndW try them, our ignorance will lie perpetual. AHxes GROWN IN GEORGIA. Col. L. D. iSckner has an apple orchard a few miles from MilKfctooville which contains seven thousand trees; the “Shockley - ’ forms six thousand five hundWj The trees are planted on fifty acres of poor pin<jy n <i ; yet some of the oldest have already borne bushels of fruit in a season. The Shockley apple is remarkable alike for its fine soundness, and long keeping qualities. Col. B/Ws sold this fruit as high as from five to seven a bar rel in Savannah and other cities. TheSvriter has 450 trees of this winter variety grovnfer • and they appear to be very hardy. The rabbitv gnawed the bark on one or two, when wo bad a servant whitewash them from the ground three feet up, and since then nothing has dis turbed them. The whitewash or lime and water should be made a trifle thicker than that used to whitewash plastered rooms. It can be applied to the tree with a rag. Garden palings and other fences, as well as all out building, not pointed, last much longer for an annual coat of good whitewash. All fruit and ornamental TS£ SOWKXRS VXBLB JMia J?IRKBXJOK. - trees are much benefited by similar treatment. Burnt Lime is distasteful to all insect depreda tors. More than half of the ashes from burnt , apple trees is lime. Most of our land in the State of Georgia is too poor for apple and pear trees to thrive and bear well without manure. Lime, woed ashes, leaf : mould, bones, and a little stable manure, all composted, (sometimes with chip manure) are the materials we apply to trees. A pear tree planted by the writer over forty years ago and treated as above described, bore twenty bushels of pears last year, worth two dollars a bushel. '■ An apple orclmrd set out at the same time is still in health, and in a bearing condition. Some ; of these trees were set on top of the ground, and a rich wood’s mould and loam carted to form a proper soil about each tree. Forty years observation in tree planting has taught us the folly of starving a plant in a hard, and barren mass of earth. For decency sake in the art of planting, give every tree and vine a fair chance to become fruitful. WASTED CAPACITY OF THE SOUTH. The New Orleans Bulletin has a capital edito- j rial on the “ wasted capacity of the Soutli,” from which we clip a paragraph, and add a few sug-J gestions: Now, in the South we have no excuse what-. ever for ignoring this great law of an inherent variety of talent and taste, in the moral and in tellectual constitution of man. We have almost every variety of soil and climate. We have, or may have, almost all kinds of natural produc tions, water power, mines, and, in a word, the elements of nearly every kind of industry. What do they avail us? Is not our industry confined chiefly to the culture of two or three agricultu | ral productions ? For what was all this profu i sion of elemental riches given us, if not to be j developed by industry—by the skillful labor of 1 cunning hands wisely and systematically em j ployed ? Variety of elements indicates clearly j | enough to him that can read the design the ne cessity of variety of pursuit in order that there l may be no waste of capacity. And this, we hike it, is precisely the point where the shoe pinches in the South. It is just here that we need reform, that we need a healthful departure from the old track which we have been pursu ing with never n thought, apparently, that it is not the right one for us travel. Some children are bom with aptness to leam ; and practice the mechanical arts, and render tlio j ' public important service as artisans, and as such , woiild acquire wealth and distinction in a con genial calling, who will make a dead failure, if forced by friends, or a mistaken ambition, into a lawyer’s or doctor’s office to study a profession. These callings, and nearly all branches of trade and traffic, are overdono from the popular idea that it is a little discreditable to be a mechanic, or to labor at some industrial pursuit. Nothing ( can be more injurious to society than such a no tion ; fig nothing, in point of fact, is more false. 11 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread all the days of thy life,” was the decree of our Maker; and whether a man toils as a physician, a lawyer, merchant, priest, or author, labor he must, or become something worse, and often something loss, than nobody. Our great diversi ty of talent, taste, strength, and energy, meet the equally diversified wants of every large com munity. It is absurd to suppose that most of the people of a State may be cotton planters, and do notliing but raise this ono staple, without placing society in an unnatural and false posi tion in its relations to the soil. Other branches of agriculture, and all useful manufactures, de mand a share of the public industry and capital. Many other plants have been created for man’s comfort and use as well as the gossypium. No one art, whether practiced in the field, garden, workshop or mine, can say, “I have no need of aid from my sister arts.” All callings are mu tually dependent on each other; and men of sound minds everywhere acknowledge their in debtedness to the thoughts of others for nearly all the wisdom they possess. Truth, industry and virtue befriend and elevate all alike; as falsehood, idleness and vice degrade all who do not shun them. “Honor and shame from no condition rise! Act well your part —there all the honor lies." — ■— i « i mm THE CAST IRON PLOW. Although cast iron plows with iron mould boards were not in use in this country, (and probably in no other) before the year 1810, and very little before the close of the war in 1815, yet cast iron Plow Shares were invented and used in the State of New York as early as 1794. In the “Transactions of the society instituted in the State of New York for the promotion of ag riculture, Arts and Manufactures” published by joint resolution of the Senate and Assembly in 1794, may be found at page 5, part 2, the fol lowing entery: ‘‘Col. Smith produced the model of a plow share, according to which it was proposed to have that utensil mode of cast iron ; ahd Mr. Smith and Judge Hobart were appointed to get several cast for trial.” Col. Smith, the inventor of the cast iron plow, was an extensive farmer of St. George’s Manor, Suffolk county, and one of the original corpora tors of the Agricultural Society of the last cen tury. He lived to represent New York in part, in the U. S. Senate for many years. THE ALBANY CULTIVATOR. We have recently added the six last volumes of the Albany Cultivator, to our library; and after reading them, we are free to say that no books in the English language, sold at the same , price, contain matter of equal value to the farm stock grower, gardener and fruit grower. The suTvription price of the work is fifty cents a year\lt is admirably printed and illustrated on and when well bound with guilt letterufeis sent, postage paid, for a dollar a volume. A a%jtcr investment of six dollars 1 can not be made He in to send the money to Luther Tucker, N. Y., and order the six last volumes of the oldest Cultivator in the United States. DEEP CULTIVATION. A gentleman of Athens informs us that he this spring sowed oats in a fruit lot where the ground j had been dug some twenty inches in depth for a considerable space around each young fruit tree set out; and that where the earth was thus deeply stirred, the oats have grown more than twice as large as elsewhere. No manure of any kind was. applied near the trees. Cultivation alone developed the remarkable increase of fer tility, and suggests the propriety of plowing , deep, and pulverising finely both soil and sub soil, to the depth of twenty inches. Good farm ers everywhere are learning, or have learnt al j ready, to comminute the under-crust of every field they plant or sow. They are getting ashamed of merely scratching the surface of the ground as a hen scratches it for her chickens. By deep and thorough tilth, the loosened, pul verized earth takes in water ike a sponge, and holds it about the roots of plants, so that the washing of the soil is impossible. — WHEAT TURNING TO CHESS OR CHEAT. Some persons, on seeing a luxurient growth j of the grass that belongs to the genus Bromus, of which there are many species, and several that infest wheatfields, have hastily concluded that wheat plants may, and do, by some freak of Nature transform themselves into this weed. Chess has a panicle head more like oats than wheat; and if the latter were liable to change into another genus or species at all, it would be into spelt rye or barley, which have a rachis like wheat, or an ear of tlie same general character, and not into a plant of a widely different anto tomieal structure. To affirm that, because a man found a flock of sheeg in a field where he had put a drove of hogs, the sheep had turned ! to swine, would be more rational than to infer that wheat changes into Bromus lteeause the 1 latter is found growing where wheat was sown. The idea that iron and lead might be turned into gold and silver held possession of the popular mind for more than three centuries; but truth is might}' and conquered at last. If it be impos sible to transmute one atom of any elementary substance into another, as it certainly is, by a much stronger natural force is it alike impos sible to change both the laws of vitality and of I dead matter, and thus alter the organization of j living things and make them infinitely wider apart than gold and iron. Once in the field, like the seed of crab-grass, chess will remain for ages, and grow best in wet places where whent has been winter killed, or injured in some other way. Indeed, this very hardy grass will itself often take the land and its plant-food away from wheat and ruin it. Bermuda grass might do the same thing, and wheat will turn to Bermuda grass, or nut grass, quite as readiiy as to any species of Bromus. Ono who has a field free from “Cheat” may keep it so by never sowing its seed with his wheat or other grain. Fanners ought te study botany and physiolo gy far enough to understand the laws that gov ern "the growth of agricultural plants, including the fungals that infest cereals and fruits, like rust on whoat aud oats, and mildew on grapes. Ignorance begets carelessness in reference to all pernicious seeds, genns, and insects, hence their rapid and often destructive increase. If a man sows wheat, let it be perfectly free from cockle, chess, rye, and every other foreign seed includ ing the spores of smut. The young wheat should be gone over with the hoe in the spring, to dlfc up all plants except true wheat. At harvest, nothing but wheat should be thrashed. All seeds in manure should be early germinated and the plants destroyed. It is the extreme of folly to permit enemies to multiply on one’s estate, from year to year. If cut and cured early, chess makes fuir hay. Horses and hogs, cattle and sheep eat the ripe seed. It is often ground for hogs and horses. — ' OUR EXPORTS TO CUBA. From official tables we learn that our exports to Cuba were $4,721,433 in the year 1838; $9,379,582 in 1857 ; and $14,433,191 in 1858. Os the last named sum, $2,760,024 was foreign produce sent from the United States. Os all the articles exported to that fertile island, perhaps the reader would like to know wdiich pleases the Cubans best. If so, he is in formed that hog's lard, to the amount of fourteen million four hundred aud twenty five thousand four hundred and seventy eight pounds, valued at $1,779,323, were exported to Cuba in the last fiscal year. This exceeds in value the gold and silver coin and bullion taken of us by $611,545. Iron manufactures, including nails, exceed one million and a half of dollars. Manufactures of wood figure in the tables, at a fraction over one million of dollars. Wheat flour reaches only to $105,569. Corn jjjeal aud com $193,743. Boaods (plank) $87,473. Staves and heading, $353,929. Tallow $205,649. Butter $117,117. The above statistics give one a fair view of the commodities likely to be consumed m much larger quantities in case Cuba should have free trade with the United States, as we have now with British provinces on the North. Our trade with the West India islands ought to be very large and profitable, and the time is coming when it will be. Our imports from Cuba, in 1857, amounted to the large sum of $45,244,101. Os this sum sugar and molasses formed $40,048.111. —«■»* 1«1 sSf“ln working corn and cotton in June, duo care should be observed not to cut or break the numerous horizontal roots of theso plants at a time when dry weather may set in and render the injury most disastrous to the crops. Culti vate carefully, the surface of the ground, and destroy all weeds and grass, but do not permit the sweep, plow, or cultivator, to enter deep enough near the corn or eotton to strike its roote. A crop of peas and one of corn, for for age, pay better when grown separate than when an attempt is made to obtain both at the same time on the same land. OBSTRUCTIONS AT THE MOUTH OF THE MIS SISSIPPI-MEDICAL AND AGRICULTURAL GEOGRAPHY. Dr. Cartright of New Orleans read an in structive paper before the Academy of Science, in that city not long since, in which he points out with clearness and much force the causes and nature of the bars of sand and mud that obstruct the outlets of the Mississippi river | where it meets the tidal currents of the Gulf, j Hitherto government engineers and hydrograph- ; ers have ascribed the formation of tliese sand bars, so injurious to the trade and commerce of j New Orleans, to the immense deposits of earthy I sediment brought down the river from the Mis- j souri aud other affluents, which fall to the ground mainly at the points where the natural current of the mighty stream is arrested by the resist ance of the ocean. In perfectly still water, free from any viscous substance, fine particles of sand and clay fell to the bottom of a vessel, river, lake or ocean, because these mineral par ticles are specifically heavier than water; and j as the velocity of moving water in a stream is | diminished by any obstruction, its power of holding weighty bodies in suspension, and of carrying them along, is lessened, and finally lost. These facts are too obvious to be misun derstood or denied; yet Dr. C. is right in main taining that the momentum of the river, at its junction with the sea, is such as to transport all fluvial sediment into the deep water of the Gulf; so that if there were an island in front of the mouths of the Mississippi, leaving deep water ] between it and the main land, to prevent the wind and waves from driving and heaping up masses of sand and clay from the sea at the outlets of the river, its natural current would keep them open, and, consequently, afford free ingress and egress to all ships. In a word, it is the force of waves and tidal currents coming from the sea to the land, which creates sand-bars at the mouths i of the Mississippi, and prevents the proper and ■ most desirable draining of many millions of j acres of the best planting lands in the State of Louisiana; and not fluvial deposits that cause j these obstructions, so prolific of stagnant water j and pestilence, and so injurious to both agrieul- | ture and commerce. Dr. Cartwright calls public attention to the ! teachings of Medical geography on this interest ing subject; aud as it is one in which agricul ture and health are even more concerned than commerce, wo shall make no apology for discus sing it at some length both now and hereafter. The paper of Dr. C. may be found in the recent May number of Ik Boiv’s Review.' Ho says: “ The Mississippi happening to be a large sedi mentary river, forming bars wherever its current is obstructed, had led to the almost universal belief that the bars at its outlets into the Gulf, are formed by a similar fluvial action as the bars in any other part of its long course. The bars at its outlets into the Gulf are supposed to be ■ forme# by the turbid stream dropping its sedi ment at the points where it meets the salt water. And I must confess that I partook of this opin ion until I carried the facts furnished by the to pography of the Mississippi at its various em bouchures, into the light of medical geography and examined them. Medical geography dis closes the fact that all rivers entering the sea at open anci exposed situations, have bars across their mouths.” Stagnant water having been known as a pro lific source of miasmatic gases, vapors and pest iferous organic matters, the cultivators of medi cal science have had occasion to study all ob structions to moving water, whether in common drains and sewers in cities, and the ordinary ditches of low-lying fields, or the defective out lets of the largest swamps, lakes and rivers.— Hence, topographical and geographical investi gations are truly parts of the medical profession, as much as skillful draining and irrigation are parts of the science of agriculture. In the lan guage of Dr. Cartwktiit, “Medical geography is the anatomy and physiology of the planet called the earth. Its end is to make man a cosmopo lite, to confer on him the power of making any part of it his dwelling place, and the ruler of everything arohnd him, under all circumstances of season and climate, to enjoy health and long life. Hippocrates, four hundred years before the Christian era, made it obligatory upon his dis ciples to study medical geography as an essen tial part of their education: besides this, for each one to make himself intimately acquainted with the topography of his particular locality be fore he presumed to practice the healing art and furthermore, he declared that no physician, however learned in other respects, was qualified to treat diseases, because they varied with the locality.” That these views of one of the fathers of med ical science are sound and true to nature, will hardly be questioned; and we ask our medical fricn4s to consider the suggestion: “If medicine in America has fallen from its high estate, and holds doubtful struggle with empiricism, it is more owing to the neglect of medical geography and topography than to any other cause.” That civil engineers should be ignorant of this department of science is not to be wonder ed at; yet it has led the United States Govern ment to expend indefinite millions in misdirect ed efforts to overcome the physical powers of moving water, in constructing harbors on the great northern lakes, removing sandbars from the mouths of rivers and creeks, and in foster ing the trade and commerce of all cities on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and Gulf of Mexico, belonging to the Republic. American engineers are not blamable because they failed to learn what is well known to the best educated physi cians. They were not expected to search medi cal libraries for professional knowledge. In laying faefs before the public, which are doemed important, we do not disparage the at tainments of a class of gentlemen who are every way entitled to respect. “In 1839, after Capt. Talcott had expended large sums in dredging the southwest pass of the Mississippi, a storm came and put more mud in the pass than twice that wiiich he had taken out. Next, the tow boat companies made a contract with the government to clear out the passes to a certain depth wiiich they did by harrowing and dragging the bottoms. They re ceived their pay just before another heavy gale came to fill them up again. Next in order Messrs. Craig and Righter took a contract under government for keeping open an eighteen feet channel The contract was taken in 1856. five years after Charles Ellet, civil engineer, liad rnada his report to the War Department, “On • the Bars at the mouth of the Mississippi River,” in which he clearly demonstrated from actual ob servations made on the spot, that the current of of the Mississippi sweeps over the bars at the mouths of the passes, many miles out into the Gulf, with a velocity almost undiminished by its contact with the waters of the Gulf. He proved that the river water does not mix sud denly with the sea water but rises upon it, floats ! over it, and rushes far out into the Gulf on the j top of the denser sea water by which it is bu oyed up.” There is much more in the paper before us to the same effect, wiiich we cannot copy for the want of space. Mr. Ellet did not see all the con sequences of Ins demonstration,' but concluded that the sediment forming tho bar was fluvial matter brought back by an under tow, or reflu ent current. An auger was driven into the bank of sediment by the United States engi neers, and it was found to consist of four or five different kinds of strata, bearing prima facie j evidence that they came from different quarters of the Gulf, and were not dropped by the upper | current or under tow; yet these instructive 1 facts were disregarded, and a system of piling, by I patented Meigdams and jetties was adopted by the contractors, because such a system had sne ! ceeded admirably on the Clyde. Very pertinently does Dr. Cartwright remark . : “If medical geograph had been consulted, it | would have told why the Meigdams succeeded j on the Clyde, and utterly failed on the Mis sis | sippi. i It will extend this article to an undesirable i length if we now say all that ought to be said on the subject of removing and evading obstruc tions in the Mississippi, and other small streams for the equal benefit of agriculture, health and commerce. Important facts in addition to those citod by Dr. C. will be stated in future numbers. mm m A CHEAP PAINT. For Outside Work. —One bushel unslaked lime. Slake with cold water. When slaked, add twenty pounds of Spanish whiting, seven teen* pounds of salt, twelve of sugar. Strain through a wire sieve, and it is fit for use after ■ reducing with cold water. It may be laid on with-wash brush. For Inside Walls. —One bushel unslaked lime, three pounds of sugar, five pounds of salt, and prepare as above. To color these paints straw color, use yellow ochre, instead of whiting; lemon color, ochre and chrome yellow; lead and slate, lampblack ; blue, indigo; green, chrome green. — i DISEASES AMONG CATTLE. Upon the practice of boring the horns, cutting off the tails, and similar remedies for diseased animals. Dr. G. 11. Dadd, veterinary surgeon, Boston, Mass., thus writes to the Valley Farmer: “I wonder that intelligent men, Christians, and men w'lio have been, for many years, the owners of high priced and rare specimens of what wo are pleased to term the inferior orders of creation, should so far disregard tho feelings and claims which the latter have on them, as to permit tho barbarities of by-gone days to be enacted over again, for no earthly use than to harass and torment a sick, and, perhaps, dying animal. For every intelligent man must be aware that cattle uro as susceptible to pain as ourselves, and that the introduction of a spike gimlet , at the base of the horn low down , must put the animal to an immense amount of tor ment; for in the region indicated, the parts are highly organized and very seusative. It gives me pleasure to find that you have a heart to feel for these much abused specimens of creative power, and also, that you have the manliness to denouuce the practice of cruelty to animals, al though it attempts to shield itself under the garb of science, but you and youi» readers may rest assured that all educated veterinary surgeons consider the practice of boring cow’s horns and cutttng off their tails, both ciuel and unneces sary. So pie of your readers may ask. How are we, who have .not studied into the matter, to know that such operations are cruel and unneces- . sary t I answer, appeal to your own intelli gence ; would you suiliy an ignorant pretender or neighbor, having no more experience in the treatment of disease than yourselves, to send a gimlet into the frontal sinuses of your sick friend, wife, or child, for no other reason than that the region of the same was hot and feverish ? Where is the man who would stand by and witness such an outrageous procedure ? Some persons may contend that animals recover after such operations have been performed. Granted, but that is no proof of the efficacy of tho same; the recuperative powers of tb« system are often strong enough to bear tho animal safely through the disease and the wretched treatment.” —aa- in Train Horses to Walk. —The Michigan • Farmer well observes: “A plow-horse should above all things be a good walker. The walk ing gait is not cultivated enough in training horses. Only consider what a team that could walk four miles an hour for ten hours per day, could do towards hurrying foward spring work." Rust on Oats —Several exchange papers from Alabama say that the oat crop is badly damaged in that State. Cistern Cement. —Two parts ashes, three of clay, and one of sand, mixed with linseed oiL