mis That amount seems generally admitted to be the right quantity, upon the principle both of profit and economy. I have strewn it broadcast, and ploughed it under, seven, eight, and nine inches, which was recommended by the first experimenters, believing it was putting it unnecessarily deep. I have, this fall, fallowed all my wheat-land the same depth, sowed the wheat and guano the same day and hour, harrowed both in together, and I never had wheat to come up better. It is taken notion that, if the wheat and guano be sown together, the causticity of the guano will injure the sprout of the wheat. Smut in wheat this season has partially prevailed in this region; as a remedy, I washed my seed in strong brine that would bear an egg, then rolled in lime. As an experiment, I added guano to one bushel-literally every grain was coated over with lime and guano; sowed it so, and fully one half failed to vegetate. This experiment proved a failure. This washing in brine and rolling in lime was pursued till I procured blue-stone, in which I had more confidence; one pound of which was dissolved in about 15 gallons of water, in which I put five bushels of wheat, stirring and washing it well, skimming off with a cullender the false grain and chess. This process was done the day preceding, to get a supply of seed for the next day, remaining in pickle about eight hours; longer will not injure. When taken out, drain it well over the pickle barrel to prevent waste, then spread upon the barn floor to drip and dry; the wheat will absorb near half the pickle; add water to supply the deficiency, and half a pound more of the blue stone for the next five bushels. The kinds of wheat cultivated in this section are various-say Mediterranean, dark grain, bearded, weak straw, and upon good land, apt to fall; Etrurian, white bearded, New York, white flint, early white, and red purple straw much approved. Smooth heads not liable to fall. For uplands the blue stem, or, more proper, Polish, which was distributed from the Patent Office. White, a large grain, smooth head, stands well, and very productive. I never cultivate bearded wheat; it is bad to handle, shatters badly, the straw is coarser than beardless wheat, and the chaff unfit for feeding. I estimate the chaff of 1,500 bushels of wheat, for feed and manure, worth $75. I grind my stock corn to a fine meal, giving to each horse and mule two quarts in the morning, two quarts at midday, and three quarts at night, well wet and mixed with a bushel basketful either of chaff or cut-straw, which will keep farmhorses in good plight. The wheat crop the present year is of good quality, except smut and damage by the joint worm, partially. estimated average upon corn-land, 10 bushels to the acre; upon low ground and tobacco land, 20 to 25 per acre. Our common time of seeding, and for several years past, has been early in September; much too early. Thirty to forty years ago, seeding was delayed until October, to pass the egging season of the fly. In a few years they were nearly destroyed for want of the wheat upon which to deposit their eggs. The few flies remaining made their attack in the spring, which is much less destructive than an autumnal attack. The Finally, from the great diminution of the fly, and scarcely a complaint of their damage, many good farmers thought they could seed wheat earlier, and commenced in September. I have seen it sown the 4th day of September in this county, and heard the fly had destroyed it; the Sep tember seeding has greatly augmented the fly by giving them a hot bed to deposit their eggs upon. The most unscrupulous will find that they must fall back to October seeding, or be subject to great damage by the fly. Late seeding and making the land rich, is the best remedy. Wheat is now selling in our market (Richmond) $1 10 for red, $1 15 for white, four months' credit, and our millers are trading upon the farmers' capital. Corn is planted from the 1st of April to the 1st of June, and is safe to cut and put in stooks of 100 stalks together as soon as the grain is glazed, about the 15th of September. My mode of planting is in rows four feet, ranging north and south, dropping four grains every two feet. Seed corn always selected from stalks bearing two good ears; I believe it is a peculiar kind, and will more generally bear double ears. Six quarts of tar is dissolved in 10 or 12 gallons of boiling water, with two pounds of copperas; when cold add the seed corn, which stands 48 hours. When taken out it will be dyed black, and very sticky from the tar; it is then rolled in gypsum, which adheres well, and planted. The copperas makes it offensive to birds and quickens vegetation. I break the land with a four-horse bar share eight to nine inches; a subsoil plough following, furrow by furrow, which breaks the hard pan and leaves no clay over to mix with the soil. The corn is dropped in that furrow upon the clay, and covered by soil about two inches, reserving the ploughed soil to be applied to the corn in cultivation, rather than place it below. Corn requires as much moisture as any plant in the vegetable kingdom; therefore, plant it deep, when it will seek and obtain moisture, and be rendered much less liable to tumble in storms. Our corn (or maize) is of many kinds. The distinctive names are white and yellow; a mixture of the old gourd seed and Tuscarora. The white makes the best bread; the yellow best stock corn, being a little richer. the I am happy to inform you that great and zealous efforts are now in progress for renovating our exhausted fields, from the Chesapeake bay, including the Piedmont part of Virginia, to the Blue Ridge mountains, by deep ploughing and subsoiling, the first and most important step in improvement; also, making and applying more home-made manure, great auxiliary, clover and plaster, pea fallow, guano, lime, marl, and ashes. Our trans-Alleghany country, naturally rich, and as yet a young country, well adapted to grass and raising stock, has very little exhausted lands. Agricultural implements: first, the plough, the most valuable tool that ever entered mother earth; the kind most approved, and in general use, is called the Livingston, made entirely of cast iron, and so ingeniously put together that there is but one screw, and that at the tail of the beam. I use No. 4, which is easily drawn by three mules. When the points are well chilled, and the land not too gravelly, they last very well, and are a cheaper plough than wrought iron when the farmer has to pay for strapping and pointing. The points, when worn out, can be pointed by breaking it off square, making a steel point to fit the breast of the plough, drilling two small holes, and rivetted on. They are, in every particular, superior to any other kind I ever used. We have a wheat fan, of recent manufacture, by a Mr. Burnet, of the town of Staunton, for construction and power of execution, separating the false wheat and chess better and more perfectly than any other kind Manures.-Our common plan is to collect forest leaves into the barn yard, and, after being trod for a few weeks, put up in pens and litter again. Neither lime nor plaster is much used, though both are thought to be good fertilizers. With my best wishes for the laudable object designed by the questions propounded, the above, though ever so imperfect, is respectfully submitted. P. S.-Many of the citizens of our district have recently organized themselves into an agricultural society, of which I have the honor of being president. In their behalf, therefore, I would be pleased to receive a part of the many seeds, &c., which are deposited in the Patent Office for distribution. SIR: On the 15th of November, 1851, I received your kind favor of a half pint of Troy wheat. On the 19th I planted it on ground measuring 36 by 30 feet in drills two feet apart. It stood the freeze of winter remarkably well, which was one of the coldest we have had for many years. The 19th March last we had a very heavy snow. The wheat had commenced jointing; the snow injured it very perceptibly. On the 15th of June I harvested it, and the yield was one hundred and four fold-that is, 26 quarts-being 104 times the amount of seed planted. Had it not been for the injury by the snow, which caused the bottom blades to die, and a very dry spring, I think the yield would have been one-third more. I am well pleased with it, and purpose giving a fair trial this fall. Most of the straw grew five and a half feet high, and I have heads of it saved from five to six and a fourth inches long. Permit me to return you my warmest thanks for the two Patent Office Reports you sent me. I view them as a great blessing to the farmer. Very respectfully, yours, THOS. A. BEATY. GREENVILLE COURT HOUSE, S. C., SIR: In reply to your Circular, which I received a few days since, I will endeavor to give you my experience in the raising of clover, that other planters in the South may be encouraged to try effectually the culture of some of those grasses that flourish so well here, and particularly that of clover, which I find to be one of the very best crops used in agricultural economy-one that grows luxuriantly, and comes in at the scarcest season of the year. It affords more nourishment than any other hay crop I have ever tried. All kinds of stock are particularly fond of it. I know that some planters in the South have been discouraged entirely from growing clover, thinking that it will not grow in this latitude, would, by being brought to the notice of other sections, be taken hold of, and thus their value be fully developed. To illustrate the above more fully, I will state, that in the State of Maryland the character and price of land varies from $1 20 to $2 per acre, owing to the various circumstances which attend its peculiar loca. tion, &c. Now, there are many persons who own land that would command the extreme price above mentioned, who have never dreamed that land, every way or easily cultivated and brought to an equal degree of fertility, can be purchased in the same State for a sum 983 per cent. [less?] Whereas, if this information could be diffused over the whole country, it might be the means of introducing enterprise and capital into those sections which need them so much, from others, where there is hardly room for their useful investment. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, To the COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS. GEO. C. PATTERSON. DOVER, DELAWARE, December 23, 1852. SIR: In reply to the interrogatories contained in your Agricultural Circular of August, 1852, I have the honor to communicate the following information: Adopting the order of the Circular, I begin with Wheat.-Guano is extensively used in this (Kent) county in the production of this crop. Generally speaking, the soil of the county was originally well adapted to the cultivation of wheat, but, by reason of hard tillage, without any return to the land in the way of manuring, it has, for the most part, been worn out for forty or fifty years; so much so, that the average yield of farms before the introduction of guano, some six or eight years ago, did not exceed, if it equalled, five bushels per acre. When I say that the average, eight years ago, did not exceed five bushels, I simply include such land as was then seeded, for a great portion of arable land in this county would not bring any wheat if seeded, without help. If all the arable land in the county had, ten years ago, been seeded in wheat-good, bad, and indifferent-I do not believe it would have averaged two bushels, or certainly not more than three bushels per acre, and of corn not exceeding eight bushels. Indeed, many farmers had almost entirely abandoned the cultivation of wheat. When I was a boy, I have frequently heard farmers in my neighborhood say they had not raised as much as they sowed. The quantity of land now seeded is, I feel very sure, more than twice as great as that sown ten years ago. The average product per acre of our land treated with 300 pounds of guano, is about fifteen bushels; without guano, about five bushels; so that the gain per 100 pounds of this manure may be set down at three and one-third bushels. The time of seeding with us varies considerably. If we sow on fallow, which is mostly used of late years, we commence about the 10th of September, and the fallow land is generally all seeded by the middle of October. The time for seeding stalk ground commences with the latter part of October, and lasts until the 5th or 10th of November, and, in some instances, even later. I have harvested wheat on the 15th of June, but our harvest usually commences about the 23d. The quantity seeded per acre is gov erned by the quality and strength of the soil and the time of sowing. If we sow early, less seed is required in the same ground than if sown late, and a stiff clay soil seems to require more seed than a light soil of equal richness, because the former will throw more wheat out in the winter season; but this last remark is not applicable to land seeded with the drill. The minimum quantity seeded is one bushel per acre; the maximum is two and a half bushels. We plough, generally, but once, and to the "yellow dirt," as the ploughman terms it, which varies in depth from four to nine inches. The yield per acre is constantly increasing in proportion as guano is more generally used. We know of no remedy for Hessian flies or weevils, though many expedients have been tried. We never suffer from the fly, however, except in a very warm, dry autumn or spring. The average price at our nearest market, in 1852, has been about one dollar. We generally sow clover on the wheat in the months of February and March; sometimes Timothy; and of late some farmers have commenced mixing rye-grass with their clover. Corn.-Guano is also used in the production of this crop, and it is thought to pay much better on corn than on wheat or oats. The ap. proved method of applying it is broadcast, and turned under to the "yellow dirt," the same as for wheat. The gain in bushels per one hundred pounds of guano is about five or six. I presume the average product per acre in this county is about twenty bushels. The cost of production per bushel, and carrying to market, cannot be less than twenty-five cents. The most approved system of culture with us is the following: Take a clover-sward and turn under deep, early in the month of October; then treat with fifty bushels quicklime; let the land lie in this way till about the middle of April; then cover with a good dressing of rich compost or barn-yard manure, and turn under some four inches with a small plough, in ridges or double furrows thrown together, each ridge being about four feet wide; then sign out or cross the ridges with furrows four feet wide, and drop five grains in each hill-this about the 1st of May. As soon as the corn gets up, the ridges, which should have been levelled at planting with a roller, are torn to pieces with a cultivator or harrow. At the same time, the replanting of the corn is begun. about two weeks more, the cultivator and hoes are again used. another fortnight, or thereabouts, the small plough is used for throwing furrows upon the hills, the corn being thinned or succored by lads going before the plough and pulling out all but two or three stalks, according to the strength of the ground. In every ten days the corn will want the cultivator again, until it shall have made the tassel. Care should be taken not to work the ground when it is wet, and to keep it worked rapidly when it is dry. We begin to "save fodder," as we term it, as soon as the corn has lost its milk, by cutting off the tops at the joint above the ear and stripping off the blades below the ear. Some persons believe that by cutting all off near the ground the corn is improved in weight; but I always "save fodder," and my corn always weighs fiftysix pounds, and frequently fifty-eight. I believe the best method of feeding horses and work-cattle is with chopped stuff-fodder, or straw mixed with meal made by grinding the broken ears of corn-cobs and grain together, especially if the farmer will keep his own mill. In In |