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AGRICULTURAL.
DANIEL LEE, HI. D., Editor.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1559.
THERE IS WORK TO BE DONE.
If tlie planters and other slaveholders are to
defend their property and tl.eir institution suc
cessfully against the systematic warfare urged
on by implacable enemies, there is much work to
be done, whether they remain in the Union, or
set up an independent and separate government
of their own. Fanaticism has little respect for
either legal rights or constitutional duties, if
they chance to stand in the way of meu fighting,
as they conceive, the unavoidable battles of
freedom. Every where they aim to excite a
spirit of revolution ; and in this country they
already deny the right of slaveholders to ask,
or expect compensation for the loss of property
in negroes manumitted by a vote of a majority
of legal electors. This doctrine is advocated by
a writer in the Xorth British Review , on the sub
ject of “Slaves and the Slave States,” who
admits that it may not have been improper in
Parliament to appropriate twenty million pounds,
or one hundred million dollars, to relieve her
West India colonies of the evils of slavery; yet
it is idle to expect Congress ever to undertake
to pay a fair market price for all the slaves in the
southern states, in order to give them the
blessings of liberty, and free the republic from
the disgrace of holding persons in bondage.—
lie says: “ Pecuniary compensation, or the
purchase of the freedom of the slave popula
tion, is wholly out of the question.” Agaip he
remarks: “Nor, indeed, is it necessary that the
United States should much longer endure the
sarcasms of Europe, for there are causes at
work which must lead to the emancipation of
the slave. The fact of emancipation we regard
an indubitable certainty.”
Helper, who has been so strougly endorsed
by the leaders and ablest men of the republican
party, says: “Not alone for ourself as an in
dividual, but for others also—particularly for
tjve or six million of southern non-slaveholding
whites, whom your iniquitous statism has de
barred from almost all the mental and material
comforts of life—do we speak, when we say
you must, soonor or later, emancipate your
slaves, and pay each and every one of them at
least sixty dollars cash in hand. By doing this
you will be performing but a simple act of justice
to the non-slaveholding whites, upon whom the
system of slavery has weighed scarcely less
heavily than upon the negroes themselves."
Such is the avowed object of a party that
commanded over a million and a quarter of votes
at the last Presidential election, some of whose
leading journals, following the bad example of
the New York Tribune , almost daily insult the
South with opprobious epithets. Sympathy for
John Brown as a martyr to liberty, is being ex
cited in England and France by such men as
Victor Hugo; and all the signs indicate a deep
and morbid sensibility on the subject of negro
slaverv, alike in Europe and in the northern
states, which is growing in intensity and
violence.
So much zeal and labor against the institution
should not be regarded with indifference by
southern planters, and lead to no efforts to
place all the facts that make weight in their
favor before the reading public. Hitherto they
have seemingly acquiesced in the numerous
false statements that have from year to year em
anated from the Patent Office, on the subject of
agricultural industry both in the southern and
northern states. Tlte Xorth British Review and
other foreign journals derive from these gov
ernment reports, statements like the following:
“Free and Slave States, 1850.—Produce per
acre: Wheat in the free states average 12.4
bushels: in the slave states, 9.8 bushels.—
Maize in the free states average 31.1 bushels;
in the slave states, 19. C bushels per acre.”—
(See North British Review for November, 1857,
page 247.)
Since the editor of the Southern Cultivator
was removed from the Agricultural Bureau to
make room for one who was willing to prepare
auti-slavery statistics, over a million volumes of
agricultural reports have been printed and bound
for gratuitous distribution, containing falsehoods
as palpable and mischievous as the above, which
have been voted for by scores of slaveholders
in both Houses of Congress. To counteract the
injurious effects of these official falsehoods, so
far as it can be done, is the work now before
the South.
It may be delayed some time longer, although
we doubt the wisdom of such delay. Tiie
Southern Cultivator has advocated the import’
ance of slave labor in all planting operations for
the last seventeen years; and yet we happen to
know that during much of that time the salary
of its senior editor was only S2OO a year,—
' while some one hundred and fifty copies of
Harpers’ periodicals, whose principal editors are
abolitionists, come to one post-office, that at
Athens, Clark county, Georgia. This practice
of starving southern publishers and fattening
those of the north, will prove in the end an ex.
pensive folly. No matter what may bo the in
trinsic merits of the great question of negro
slavery, it will hardly do to mislead and poison
public opinion, by millions of official documents
printed at Washington, and tens of millions of
anti-slavery papers published in the free states,
until nine-tenths of the people pronounce the
institution a curse to the country, and a dis
credit to a nation of freemen. What the slave
holders have lost in this way, somebody must
labor long and hard fully to regain. The lack
of well-directed mental labor on southern soil,
is fast making the planting states the feeble, de
pendent colonies of the ever-aggrandizing, over
shadowing north. The Field and Fireside
appreciates the work to be donS; and it is for
sovnesas hem mmm
its readers to say whether its proprietor shall
have a subscription I.st that will pay its ex
pense.- or not.
Tiic readers of the New York Tribune have
been willing to work hnd extend its circulation
until its paying subscribers are numbered by the
hundred thousand. When our enemies are thus
industrious and persevering, shall our friends
extend to us nothing but the most profound and
blighting indifference ? Can they forget that
labor alone develops the truth? —that labor
alone conquers all things ? Slaveholders! there
is work to be done. You are chosen defend
ants in a suit that involves your property, your
honor, and the welfare of your children. Can
you not make a calm and united effort to place
your great and common interests in the right
before the world f Every apology made for
slavery places it in the wrong. Men never
ajiologise for the existence of good institutions,
ior sound principles. An apology implies con
scious wrong-doing ; it invites criticism whether
the acknowledgment is sufficient. If sufficient,
the least that can be expected is that the wrong
■ shall not be repeated. Anti-slavery writers
take this ground: “Slave-holding is either
wrong or right. If wrong, it should not be con
tinued ; if right, it should be lawful as well in
the northern as in the southern states.” We
accept these propositions, and are prepared to
show in the forum of a pure Christian conscience,
that negro slavery, as it exists in the south,
would be right anywhere, but is obligatory on
the superior race nowhere. If the latter are
unwilling to perform the oneTous duties of good
masters, they may escape them by relinquishing
all the benefits of slave labor.
If, in any man’s opinion, the compensation
given by the negro is less than a fair equivalent
for the service rendered by his master, it would
be wrong to compel such a man to be a slave
holder. But he has no right to give his opinion
the form of public law, and forbid other men
employing slaves, who are both able and willing
to make this kind of domestic government, and
productive industry, alike advantageous to the
slave, to his employer, and to mankind at large.
It is not wrong to give work to a black man, re
strain his vices, cultivate his morals, and teach
him at once the art of agriculture, or some me
chanical trade, end the humanizing, elevating
principles of the Christian religion. The South
should make no excuses for the existence of an
institution of this character: but prove by her
self-respect and wisdom, that education, science
and literature are benefitted, not injured, by
her present system of labor. Its best fruits
aro lavished on northern commerco, northern
merchants, northern colleges and medical schools
northern manufacturers, and northern farmers’
to say nothing of northern publishers, editors
and authors, who use the wealth and power
thus acquired to dry up and utterly destroy this
prolific source of northern as well as southern
prosperity. Let us learn to live more within
our own home resources, both intellectual and
material, and we shall gain largely in strength,
and in the world’s esteem.
—
A Description* of Tuscan - Agriculture, ky
J. C. L. Sismonde, of Geneva. —Mr. Geo. F.
Jones, of this State, now a student at Heidle
berg, in Baden, and his brother, W. S., have
kindly furnished us with a translation made by
them of an instructive and valuable work on
Tuscan Agriculture, written by the learned and
distinguished J. C. L. Sismonde, of Geneva.
The author spent several years in Tuscany, and
was himself the proprietor of a lauded estate
there, and engaged in farming operations. "We
shall make copious extracts from this reliable au
thority on the agriculture (particularly drainage,
irrigation, and grapo culture,) of a people far
advanced in rural arts and sciences. The read
er will find in this paper, from the work named,
an interesting aceount of the Tuscan method of
preserving wheat under ground, after the an
cient practice of the Egyptians and Assyrians,
which was followed by the Romans, and intro
duced by them into Spain, France, and other
provinces of the empire. In storing grain for
the use of their great armies, the Romans exca
vated, sometimes from solid rock, the largest
and best granaries known to history. When
properly sealed, to exclude all air and water,
nothing can injure well-dried wheat, maize, or
other grain, no matter how long it remains under
ground. Were it in a glass bottle, it could not be
more secure and exempt from all chemical
changes to injure it.
——
Mules. —Messrs. W. B. Rogers, and W. R.
Colcord, of Bourbon county, sold, the other day,
to Messrs. Todhunter & Co., of Fayette, 43
mules, mostly broken, at the high price of
$212,80. This is the highest price we have
ever known for so large a lot of mules. These
are intended for the Louisiana market. Col. C.
R. Estill, of Madison county, sold, a few days
ago, to liarrison Thompson, Esq., of Clarke Co.,
a lot of sixty yearling mules, at the price of
slls per head. W. S. Helm, Esq., of Shelby
county, lately sold to James Horton, of Boui
bon, one hundred and ten mules, at $l6O per
head—amounting to $15,000. — [American Stock
Journal.
The time is not distant, when oxen will have
to do most of the work of preparing land for
corn, cotton and other cultivated crops. Mules
now sell as high as negroes did in the State of
New York within the memory of the writer.
— 111 ——■—-
Pasteboard Shoes. —These shoes are coarse
brogans, such as sell at retail for $1 and $1.25.
What is usually the sole, is, in this case, only
very thin, poor leather —it may be sheepskin.
The welt is very thick, coarse leather, to which
both upper leather and sole are sewed or pegged;
the deficiency inside is supplied by thick yellow
pasteboard. The shoes thus appear to have
very good stout soles. A very little wear carries
away the thin skin of a sole, and the yellow
pasteboard presents itself, and the cheatery is
thus exposed, too late for the purchaser. We
have seen all this.— Shoe and Leather Reporter.
We believe some of our planters have been
thus swindled the past season.
NIGHTSOII AND POUDRETTE.
Savannah, Pec. 19, 1859.
Dr. Lee: Dear Sir .-—Materials in large
quantities for the manufacture of Poudrette be
ing convenient in this city, and having an idea
of engaging in its manufacture, I am induced to
request you will give me what information you
can on the subject, its value as compared with
other fertilizers and the processes of manufact
ure. You will please inform me if there is any
method of concentrating Stable Litter without
injury to it as a fertilizer —where can proper ap
paratus be obtained for pulverizing bones.
I have taken the liberty of addressing you,
from the fact of your zeal in developing the agri
cultural resources of our section, and believe
that you will not think me intrusive. Pleaso
let me hear from you (by letter) at your earliest
convenience.
Respectfully yours, L. S.
P. S. riease inform me what works I can
get which treat of the above. L. S.
If we supposed our correspondent’s private in
terests would be injured by the publication of
his letter, and its being answered in our col
umns, we beg to assure him that nothing of the
kind would have been done. But it relates to a
matter of general interest to our readers, and we
feel sure that, in case he shall undertake to col.
lect nightsoil and manufacture poudrette in Sa
vannah, all will wish him success. He will,
therefore, permit us to explain to others, as well
as him, the nature of the two principal difficul
ties to be overcome in the contemplated opera
tion. The first is the inconvenience and loss re
sulting from the escape of very offensive gases;
and the second is, the presence in faces and
urine, taken together, of more than 90 per cent,
of perfectly valueless water, which ought to be
got rid of to furnish a rich, concentrated ferti
lizer.
Evaporation in the sun, either in shallow plank
vats, as solar salt is made at Salina and Syracuse
in New York, or in shallow clay basins, is prob
ably the cheapest way to concentrate a manurial
brine of this character. Os course artificial
heat may be used, as is done near many cities;
or dry swamp muck, pulverized charcoal, or
Irish bog peat, as is largely done in Dublin, Lon
don and Liverpool, may be employed to absorb
the liquids. More or less of these well known
absorbents is used to assist in drying the mass,
and retaining the volatile substances. Cheap
copperas or green vitriol yields sulphuric acid
readily to ammonia, as it is formed in decompo
sing night soil, and converts it into an involatile
salt. Ground gypsum is used for a similar pur
pose. Not over ten or twelve per cent, of cop
peras or gypsum need be employed; although
from 20 to 30 per cent, of the latter is often
used. To grind bones rapidly requires heavy
castings anu strong machinery. Mr. Bogardus’
bone mill is one of the best that we have ever
seen in operation. He lives in the city of New
New York. Dealers in agricultural implements
and machines will give you the latest informa
tion on the subject. We have paid something
over sixty cents a bushel for ground bones, and
not the best kind, in the city of Washington.—
A fair article of poudrette is manufactured there.
Before embarking much capital in the business,
it would be prudent to visit Baltimore, Philadel
phia and New York and seo all the processes as
now performed, get the needful apparatus and,
perhaps, an experienced hand at the business.
There is money in it, if wisely managed; but it
requires some capital and skill to turn out a first
rate commercial article. Dead animals, from
horses down to rats, mice and small fish, supply
the richest sort of manure. Wo cannot name a
cheap bcok that will give you all the informa
tion you seek. By taking time to look over our
library, we can give in two or three columns of
our paper all the material book knowledge on
the subject. In the mean time you may consult
the “American Muck Book” by D. J. Browne,
to advantage. C. M. Saxton, of New York, pub
lisher. Boussmgault describes the French man
ner of making poudrette; and Dr. Sprengel and
others that of Flanders. The Flemish farmers
and the Chinese mix up dried human excrements
into cakes of clay—real bricks of fat manure.—
Remember these two facts: A substance that is
in volatile can not bo smelt ; and one that is in
soluble can not be tasted. Perhaps we will write
out and publish an entire lecture on night soil
in all it forms, agriculturally considered. Bous
singault, Johnston and Stoekliardt are our text
book on manures and their chemical relations.
To produce the food of plants in the best possi
ble condition for the farmer, requires far more
study and practice than most men suppose ne
cessary. How will you remove every drop of
water from a barrel of urine and leave behind
every particle of matter but pure water? We
know no way “to concentrate stable litter,”
that will pay in common practice. Almost ev
ery day we haul sixteen hundred pounds of
worthless water four miles to get four hundred
of stable manure, which costs at least a dollar
and a quarter.
Vaccination of Cattle. —The Medical Times
says that in Holland there are assurance offices
for catt'e’s lives. One company has all its as
sured cattle vaccinated as a preservation against
contagious pneumonia. Another company in
oculates only when the disease has invaded the
animals’ stalls. The third company does not
vaccinate at all. It has been calculated that the
first company has lost 6 per cent, of cattle, the
second 11 per cent, and the third 40 percent.
Professor Simpson’s Caustic. —The new
caustic recently introduced by Professor Simp
son, of Edinburg, consists of an ounce of highly
dried sulphate of zinc, mixed with a drachm of
glycerine, and applied as a paste to the diseased
part. It quickly produces its effects, and a few
applications are deemed sufficient to effect a
cure. One great advantage which this caustic
is said to possess is, that it acts only upon parts
denuded of cuticle, therefore the fingers are
free from its influence. It has been successfully
used by the human surgeon, but we question if
it will prove sufficiently powerful for veterinary
purposes. Os the efficacy of the chloride of
zinc, we can confidently speak.— Veterinarian.
Chinese Tea Plants. —A Washington cor
respondent says : “ Tiie tea plants imported
from China by direction of Secretary Thompson,
and now in a greenhouse on the mall, are to be
distributed in January next, among the different
Congressional Districts south of the thirty-sixth
parallel of latitude. Four different circulars on
this subject were last week sent to every Rep
resentative from those Southern Districts. One
j asks the name of a gentleman in that District,
who will receive and cultivate the plants free of
charge. The second directs how they are to be
| cultivated, and what returns are to be made. —
In the third are •the blanks to be filled up
and returned to the Agricultural Bureau ; and
the fourth comprises the report of Mr. Fortune,
an English gentleman, who procured the plants
in China. Let it not be forgotten that the first
experiment in raising tea in the United States
was ma de in South Carolina.”
That the tea shrub and its leaves may be
grown as easily as the mulberry tree and its
leaves at the South, we entertain not a doubt •
but whether the leaves of the latter can be at
this time profitably converted into silk, or the
leaves of the former into commercial tea, is quite
a different question. Many families, however,
can produce their own tea, provided the climate
and soil impart to the leaves the desired aroma
and theme.
- — m . -*•+.
Milledgeville, Dec. 20, 1859.
Dr. Lee : I sowed, some weeks since, a lot
of orchard-grass seed, which came up finely, but
was cut down by the frost about ten days since.
I have still four bushels of the seed, which 1
wish to sow. Had I better sow now, and risk
the cold—or wait till spring? Will it do to sow
the seed in the spring ? Please answer, and
oblige Your subscriber, J. H. N.
We are in doubt what answer to give to your
question. It the ground is low and moist, and
likely to heave by freezing, we should wait till
early spring-, but if the laud is dry, we should
sow at once. Last December we sowed some
six acres to orchard-grass seed, and got a good
stand—and it is pleasant to see how well sheep
do this winter on this winter grazing.
-
[For the Southern Field and Fireside.]
THE METHOD OF PRESERVING WHFAT IN
TOSCANY.
Wheat is preserved in Tuscany in a manner
as extraordinary as it is advantageous, in exca
vations made under ground, which are called
buche. It is there kept, from one year to an
other, perfectly sound, protected from all acci
dents and from all insects, without requiring ex
pense or care. Before putting it in the store
house, it is necessary to dry it well in the sun.
In order to find a substitute for the burning rays
which dart upon Tuscany, it would be, without
doubt, necessary in other climates, to place the
wheat in a stove, or in an oven, after having ta
ken out tho bread.
Their conservatories or buche, are oval excava
vations, capable of containing from twenty to a
hundred and fifty sacks of wheat. Those into
which I have descended, are dug in a vein of
thick potter’s clay, of a yellowish red, which
never having been removed, and not composed
of layers, does not permit the water to filter,
and is impervious to animals. They have all
been built under covers of tile, and on small hills
where the waters do not accumulate. Before
putting the wheat in them, they are covered with
a doubler of straw ; for this purpose, a thick rope
is formed, three, inches in thickness, which is
placed all round upon the ground spirally, each
course resting on the preceding, in the same
manner as the bottles of the country are cover
ed. The cavity is finally filled with wheat; the
neck of this kind of bottle is corked with two
straw mats, which are placed upon the grain;
and above with a large round stone, which
closes it tightly. After having placed the stone,
it is watered with some buckets of muddy wa
ter, in order to close all the interstices ; then it
is covered with a half foot of earth, which levels
the place with the rest of the soil.
There are few individuals who possess con
servatories ; but they may be buried under cover
of many kilns ; the proprietor of the kiln is re
sponsible for your wheat; he incurs all of the
necessary expenses of putting it in, and taking
it out, and ho offers you the choice, of returning
to you as many sacks as he has received from
you without taking anything for himself but
what is found over; or to return all of the wheat
which comes out of your conservatory, receiving
four cents per sack for storage. As the grain
swells in the conservatory about three per cent.,
the first contract is better for him than the se
cond.
The conservatory remains shut, and is never
opened until you wish to part with your wheat,
when it becomes necessary to empty it at once.
After having uncovered it, and removed the
stone and the matting, there will be found at
the entrance a third of a sack about half mouldy,
which has been moistened by the muddy water
which was thrown on top of the stone ; it be
longs' to the proprietor of the conservatory,
and is not counted ; what is found below, is
perfectly dry, without any odor of confinement,
or of heat, without a single grain being attack
ed by weavils; moreover, when it happens that
a conservatory is filled with wheat which has
begun to heat, the coolness of the earth imme
diately reduces the fermentation, and kills all of
the insects to be found there. Nevertheless,
the wheat which is at the bottom, is not so fine;
it is swelled by water and has a slight odor of
mouldiness. The millers are careful to mix all
that is taken out, so that the inferiority of what
M at the bottom, is not perceived in a large heap.
As soon as a conservatory has been emptied,
the lining of straw is removed ; it having ac
quired a musty smell is no longer preserved ;
the hole is well swept, and it is closed both with
the stone and earth which is put over it, until
the moment arrives for filling it again.
— nw<
Hard Cement. —The following cement has
been used with great success in covering ter
races, lining basins, soldering stones, &c., and
everywhere resists the filtration of water. It is
so hard that it scratches iron. It is formed of
ninety-three parts of well burned brick, and sev
en parts of litharge, made plastic with linseed
oil. The brick and litharge are pulverized ; the
latter must always be reduced to a very fine
powder; they are mixed together, and enough
of linseed oil added. It is then applied in the
manner of plaster, the body that is to be cover
ed being always previously wet with a sponge.
This precaution is indispensable, otherwise tho
oil would filter through the body, and prevent
the mastic from acquiring the desired degree of
hardness. When it is extended over a largo
surface, it sometimes happens tc have Haws in
it, which must be filled lip with a fresh quantity
of the cement. In three or four days it becomes
firm.— Scientific American.
[For the Southern Field and Fireside.]
CORN FOR SOILING.
Oglethorpe Couxty, Ga., Dec. 9.
Dr. Lee: I see in your paper of Octo'ber ],
that J. J. Shannon, Esq., of Paulding, Miss., is
asking which is the best plant to be grown for
soiling in summer ?
He remarks that he has never tried broad
cast corn for that purpose. If so, he has failed
to try the best plant, for said purpose, that can
be grown in the Unite<LStates; for it will pro
duce four times as much per acre as any other,
and, if the land be made good, two or three
crops can be made in one year on the same land.
I have seen cut per acre, on my father’s farm
in Virginia, over thirty tons of green broad-cast
corn in the proper state for soiling.
Mr. S. says the most fear he lias about it is
that it would be difficult to cure. Such is the
fact Jwlien not properly shocked; but when pro
perly put up, it is easily cured and makes the
best of feed for stock. I have never yet seen
any fodder spoiled when properly put up.—
Com, wo all know, can protect itself from the
rain better than any other crop. In our climate
we can have green corn to soil on, from the first
of May until December following, in any ordi
nary season.
I have tried the Chinese sugar-cane, and
must agree with you, Mr. Editor—it is poor stuff',
and nothing but half-starved stock will eat it.
Yours truly, O. W. Bailey.
PLOWING BY STEAM.
There appear to be scarcely any limits the pur
poses to which steam may bo applied. It pro
pels us over water and over the land. It extin
guishes our fires„and makes our bread. It sup
plies the strength of human muscle in almost ev
ery department ot manufacrures. It pulls up by
the roots the stumps which the woodman’s axe
has left. While we write we listen to its music
as it raises bricks and mortar to the top of the
up-rising walls of a hotel. Its sinews never tire,
and it never eats. It is probable that it will ul
timately be applied to almost every purpose
which muscle, either animal or human, now sub
serves. It will be almost to banish draft horses,
oxen and all other animals now employed in
teams and carriages from existence. This will
save the food which they must neceesasily con
sume, and consequently add the land requisite
for the production of such food to that which
yields the food of man. This will increase the
capacity of every country to produce the means
of human subsistence. Steam may also be the
solvent of the labor question; for if the trees can
be felled, the stumps dragged out, the ground
plowed, the grain sowed, the corn, cotton, etc.,
planted, the harvests gathered, the grain thresh
ed, corn husked, cotton picked, ginned, taken to
market, made into cloth, into clothing, etc., etc.,
and all by steam, where is the necessity of hu
man hands and human sinews? If a man can
jump into his steam gig or buggy and whirl
around town or out into the country over hill and
dale by steam where is the necessity for a horse?
That it will be used for all these purposes, and a
thousand more, appears to be hardly problemat
ical. It is making rapid strides, and what it has
done is a sure index as tQrwhat it will do. Sev
eral attempts have been made to apply steam to
carriages on common roads, and though not yet
with entire success, we have no doubt that com
plete success will be the final result.
Indeed, in the ages to come iron fingers mov
ed by steam will print the papers for the mil
lions to read, as steam now moves the presses
that human hands formerly did; and for aught
we know the Editor in his sanctum will put his
thoughts on paper by steam, whole sentences at
a dash.
What a saving of labor, wear and tear will
that be! Oh, for the good time to come, when
this nuisance of being compelled to write single
words, not to speak of single letters, shall be re
ferred to as illustrative of the terrible drudgery
which people.of old times had to endure 1 There
is one point, however, beyond which steam will
hardly go. It will never be able to supply
brains. That parricular part of the “ labor ques
tion ” will have to remain.
But a truce to this. We have a step forward
in the victorious career of steam in its success
ful application to plowing. A-steam plow has
been invented, tested, and it has triumphed. The
inventor is Joseph W. Fawkes, of Christiana,
Lancaster county, Pa. Its operations were wit
nessed by a great crowd of people near Chicago
at the late Fair of the National Agricultural So
ciety, and its Grand Gold Medal of Honor award
ed to the inventor by the unanimous recommen
dation of the Society’s Committee. The prize of
$1,500 offered by the New York State Society
for a successful steam plow, was also awarded
him. The machiue is of course yet in its crude
state, like the first steamboat of “ poor John
Fitchbut crude as it may be, it plowed three
and a half acres per hour at the Fair, and did it
beautifully. It drove eight plows. Its weight,
including water and fuel, was ten tons, and its
cost $4,000. Such a weight would be too great
for the soft soil of Louisiana, but who doubts
that, with the improvements which time and ex
perience will produce, it will be reduced in weigty
and cost, and made nearer perfect, so that it can
operate in any soil ? We do not. There was an
other plow exhibited, invented by one Walters,
but it failed, having met with an accident. Last
year a prize of £SOO was awarded by the Royal
Agricultural Society of Great Britain to John
Fowler, Jr., of London, for a steam plow, and
a prize of £SO to the same by the same this
year; but in the opinion of tho Committee of the
United States Agricultural Society, this steam
plow of Faw kes’ is greatly superior in every res
pect. One of the machines is to be built for
somebody in New York, and from this com
mencement, the steam plow will doubtless grad
ually prolong its furrows till every farm in the
country shall have been plowed by it. Onward
is the word, onward! —[Kew Orleans Bulletin.
- OF POPULATION IN ENGLAND
AND FRANCE.
The London correspondent of the Xational In
telligencer furnishes’the following interesting facts
relating to the relative and absolute increase of
population in tho two most powerful nations of
Europe:
The tvt o great elements of England’s prosper
ity are the almost astounding increase of her
population and the more than proportional in
crease of her commercial capital. Respecting
tho former, wo are told by the report of the Re
gistrar General for tho three months which end
ed last September that, on an average during
those three months, tho people of England in
creased 695 in number every day. This was the
average excess in the number of births over the
number of deaths through the period of ninety
two days; and he calculates that in the United
Kingdom tho increase amounted to 1.042 daily.
At tho ordinary rates of mortality 347 will ar
rive daily at the age of twenty. “ The youth of
the country,” says the Registrar, “are growing
at such a rate as to add a battalion to its strength
every two or three days.” Some of the increas
ing multitude are indeed always emigrating.