The crops have been very good this season, and had it not been dry in summer, would have been unusually productive. Wheat is good, asalso corn, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, &c. Turnips were injured by the worms this year and last, which may be prevented by putting a little fine salt at the roots, though attended with labor; dipping the roots in salt when set will help them. Wild fruits abundant, and apples as plenty as advice-had for packing, in any quantity; many thousand bushels wasted on the ground. With respectful esteem, yours truly, To the COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS. EUSEBIUS WESTON. NEW SHARON, FRANKLIN COUNTY, MAINE, SIR: Thy Circular, under date of 8th mo., 1852, was duly received, and in compliance with the request contained therein, I forward the following particulars, viz: Wheat.-Average product per acre, eighteen bushels. Time of seeding, on or near the twentieth of fifth month. Time of harvesting, about the twentieth of ninth month. Seed prepared by washing in pickle and mixing with a small amount of lime. Plough once in the fall, about eight inches, and use the cultivator to mellow it in the spring. Yield per acre upon the increase. System of rotation: oats, corn, or potatoes, and wheat. Remedies for Hessian flies and weevils: late sowing, and lime and ashes sown broadcast when the wheat has attained a growth of six iuches. Average price in our market, one dollar. Grass seeds, Timothy, and clover mixed and sown with the wheat. Best Corn.-Average product per acre, thirty bushels; cost of producing per bushel, fifty cents. Best system of culture: green manure, ploughed under in the fall, and old manure put in the hill to give the crop an early start. Hoed twice or three times, according to the season. method of feeding, ground and cooked. Method of preparing_soil, ploughing in fall and again in the spring, and harrowing fine. Rows three feet and a half distant, stalks three feet. Outs.-Average yield per acre, twenty bushels. Quantity of seed, two and a half to three bushels per acre. Barley. Do not raise it. Ryje-ditto. Peas.-Planted with potatoes, four in a hill. Average yield per acre, five bushels. Not cultivated for renovation of land. Beans with corn between the hills, five in each hill; average yield, seven to eight bushels per acre. Clover and Grasses.--Average yield per acre, usually about one ton. Quantity of seed used, eight pounds of clover and one peck of Timothy per acre. Have not experimented upon meadow land. Cost of produc on. four dollars per ton. Dairy Husbandry.-Average yearly product per cow, one cwt. cheese and thirty pounds of butter. Respectfully, To the COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS. FREDERICK SWAN. PERRY, WASHINGTON COUNTY, MAINE, SIR: In reply to the Agricultural Circular, I will state only my own experience with a few of the subjects therein named. Wheat is not much cultivated, and no systematic experiments are within my knowledge as to the increased product from the use of guano. It is usually made to follow the potato or turnip crop, and seldom gets any manure other than what was applied to the previous crop. It is as sure as most crops, yielding on an average 15 bushels per acre, sown with Timothy, red clover, and fowl meadow grasses. Corn-we raise none. Average yield of oats, fifty bushels upon pasture land or green-swardof barley, thirty bushels. As to the cost of producing wool, I have found that, with any breeds we have here, a pound of fine Merino wool costs. less than a pound of coarse wool. From some experiments in porkraising (incomplete as yet) I am led to suppose that five pounds of grain are required to make a pound of pork. In the cultivation of root crops, especially rutabaga, I have found guano the cheapest and best manure. I have tried it side by side with manure from the barn cellar and find it fully equal, at a cost not exceeding that of carting the manure when the transportation is a quarter of a mile. Six hundred pounds applied to an acre gave eight hundred bushels rutabaga, where without it there probably would not have been two hundred; a few rows left without guano for comparison, gave nothing at all. The cultivation of this crop is increasing, but not so fast as it ought. Where we cannot raise corn, this may, to some degree, supply its place. Beef may be made to good advantage, two bushels a day to a fatting ox, and he will require but very little hay, and will fatten fast; a half bushel a day, with straw, for cows or young cattle, I find very well takes the place of hay; and for store-hogs, half a bushel to each, fed raw, will keep them in good condition. Irish potatoes, our great staple, rot as bad as ever in most places, while some localities entirely escape. Fruit is only beginning to receive attention; yet it may be made the most profitable crop of the country. Apples may be produced here good enough, as we have examples to show, and in sufficient quantity, to be a scurce of profit Plums succeed as well as anywhere; cherries also. I consider the best method of grafting to be the following: Take up the tree at a year old, cut it off at the ground with a sloping cut an inch long; match the scion to it nicely, and tie with cotton wicking; put no wax or anything else around the splice, but set out immediately burying the splice two or three inches in the ground. This method performed as early as the young trees can be got up, will prove successful with apple, plum, or cherry, in most cases. I have some fine plums which are four years from a graft in the root, and bore fruit last year. Manures.-I have not been able to perceive any beneficial effects from lime used in any way, or from plaster used alone; but mixed with guano. in equal parts, I think it tends to retain the fertilizing principle, so tha the crops get more of it. Gnano, at three hundred pounds per acre, gave a yield of potatoes equal to that given by twelve cords barn manure. Respectfully, WILLIAM D. DANA. SIR: I have been in the business of rearing and marketing mules for many years; which I have marketed principally in New Haven, Connecticut, and in the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania; which animal, in the latter two States, is much in use, I sold mules there twenty-eight years ago last fall, which were two years old; and I saw some of them two years ago, which were fat; and the owners said they were as good as ever. I have conversed with many aged gentlemen, who have used mules for fifty years, and with some who then had mules in their possession which they represented to be forty-two years of age. I have been also told of one owned in Pennsylvania that was sixty-three years old. I am fully satisfied, from my own observation, that mules live to double the age of horses; that it costs but about one-half as much to keep them, and are not one-half so subject to disease; consequently, the saving would be great; and I think they ought to be used for draught in all countries, instead of horses. Such complaints as heaves, spavin, &c., I have never yet seen or heard of about a mule; and I have raised hundreds and seen thousands; which complaints are very prevalent among horses. I give it as my opinion, that the average age of mules is thirty five or forty years. They are much easier broken than horses, if treated with kindness. It is true, there seems to be a general prejudice existing with people against this animal; and it is expected that they will kick or kill everybody who has much to do with them; and when people undertake to break them, it is thought to be the first requisite to tie them up and give them a sound drubbing, not for anything the innocent creatures have done, but for something they are expected to do; and being animals that are intelligent, they rightly become dissatisfied with such treatment, and, of course, will show resentment. While engaged in selling, I have helped harness up a great many taken from the drove, without any previous training, and have driven them in a wagon containing several persons besides myself, and I never saw one contrary or refuse to go off immediately. They are much more intelligent and tractable than horses, and their attachment is much stronger, if well treated. The foal is carried easier by the mare, and reduces her less, both before and after birth. They can always be sold for ready cash at the South; and, taking them on an average, and at any age, will bring more money here at the North than horses. Therefore, I invite my fellow farmers to examine this subject, and take a greater interest in rearing mules. They are a cash article, and a very useful and profitable animal; and it would save the North millions of dollars were they in as common use here as at the South. The mule is adapted to labor at a younger age than the horse; and experience is all that is wanting to convince the people of the North of the great advantages that would accrue from bringing these animals into general use at home, and from rearing them more abundantly for the Southern markets. SIR: I had the honor of receiving the Circular from the Patent Office, through the politeness of Hon. S. Foot, and take this opportunity to reply as far as I am able to the questions therein; and if by so doing I can add anything to the Agricultural Report forthcoming, and contribute my mite to the worthy cause of distributing, through the Patent Office Report, general agricultural information, I shall be recompensed. Rutland county lies between 43° 18′ and 45° 50′ north latitude, and contains almost all varieties of soils, consisting of clays of all kinds. sands of all qualities, muck, hard-pan, alluvial loams, and slate, and a mixture of these in every possible way. Of rock, the limestone formation is predominant; marble quarries inexhaustible, from the fine, clear, white (fully equal to the Italian) to coarse grades, and of a'l colors; slate is found equal to any in the world, for writing, for roofing, and other purposes, not forgetting the soft white slate-pencil quarries; the hard head, the flint and rock of primitive formation. Of soils, there is the most of the loams; a mixture of loam and sand is the best soil for grains; clay is the best for grass if there is plenty of wet, and slate for wheat; yet all crops raised here are made to prosper often on every variety of soil. Of crops, hay is the most important, treble the value of all the Good farmers so manage the land as to make it produce the greatest amount of hay; keeping stock is the main business. Corn is the next crop in importance; then oats; then Irish potatoes, peas, beans,, rest. carrots, and turnips are raised in small quantities. We have an agricultural society that is in a prosperous condition, and through this I expect great benefit to the agriculturists of Rutland county. Horses, cattle, and sheep are improving, as are crops of grain and roots. Twenty five years have wrought a great change in the plough and all other farm implements, for the better. Many now plough deep and give thorough culture, and begin to understand that the greatest support on which they can depend is their manure. The idea has exploded that a farm can be cheated and robbed and continue to produce well-have much absorbed by the crops and but little returned; the cheat is the other way. Men that make and apply much manure to their soils, plough deeper and deeper, and give thorough culture, are generously rewarded by their crops, by the increase of the value of their lands, and by the additional means to make the soil still richer; while those that adopt the shallow ploughing, half cultivating, half or less manuring, slovenly skimming operation, are growing poorer; their crops and the value of their lands decreasing, and they ready to say, hard times, a hard life, and poor business to farm it; when at least they are merely apologies for husbandmen. One great fault of many of the Rutland county farmers is, that they have too much land-they have not the capital requisite to carry on thoroughly, nor stock of approved kinds, to fence, ditch, cultivate, manure, and improve their soils; but all the money they can scrape together must go to pay for land. Taking us altogether, our crops are increasing. Wheat did well on almost all soils when first cleared of the primeval forests, and for years afterward, and until 25 or 30 years ago; it had been for years a crop, and, on the farmer's delivering his surplus at Troy, N. Y., lined his pockets with the ready cash. But then came a failure in the crops of both winter and spring varieties; and from that time to the present, but few have continued to try to raise it. Most kinds of seed that have been brought here from abroad have done well for a few years, and then would be attacked by the Hessian fly, the weevil, or the rust, and would then be discarded. There have been some favorite spots, however, that have always born good wheat. Mellow loams on elevated lands, in the bosom of the Green Mountains, generally of the spring varieties. About 10 years ago, a Black Sea spring wheat was very productive and much raised, but it run out in a few years. Winter wheat is now in fashion-the white flint and a bearded wheat, brought from Michigan. It is sown from the 20th of August to the 20th of September. One way to prepare the ground is to take an old pasture, plough in June, (summer fallow,) plough again the last of August or fore-part of September, harrow fine, and sow with 14 to 2 bushels per acre. Harvest late in July or early in August; yield per acre, from 15 to 40 bushels-average 25 bushels. Another method is, to take a piece that has been in corn, and heavily manure on the sod and turn it under; the corn crop cut up and drawn off as soon as ripe enough, which is from the first to the middle of September. The ground is ploughed, harrowed fine, and the wheat sown. The seed is washed and soaked in strong brine 24 hours; then mixed with slacked lime, 4 quarts to the bushel, and then sown; the salt and lime kill the weevil and prevent smut. Corn. This is a sure crop. The best method is to take a piece that has been in grass from 5 to 8 years, manure with coarse manure and plough thoroughly, pass a heavy roller over it, then harrow until well pul |