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APPENDIX.

The present Report having already exceeded the usual number of pages, only the following communications of those deferred from the Report of 1850 are inserted:

DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, January 7, 1851.

SIR: Your Circular sent to me, requesting information on the various branches of agriculture in our part of the State, was duly received. I herewith transmit to you replies to some of the inquiries which have come under my observation and experience:

Wheat.-We do not cultivate wheat much in our part of the State; we consider it an uncertain crop. Some of our farmers, recently, have been sowing the winter wheat, and speak of it as doing very well. I am not able to give much information on that subject.

Corn I consider one of the best crops we cultivate. The middling size eight-rowed early yellow-seed, and the eight-rowed white-flint corn, I believe to be the two best and most profitable kinds of seed. I have planted different kinds of seed-the large eight and twelve-rowed; but this large seed corn takes longer to ripen, and it does not fill out so well-there is too large a space between the rows on the cob; it will not shell out so much, and will not weigh so much a bushel. My method for ploughing and planting is as follows: Plough the sward ground in the fall of the year-say in September; the more grass and second crop you turn under the better; plough deep-say from seven to nine inches: this is of great importance; harrow the ground well in the spring, as soon as the frost is out and it is dry enough to make it mellow and fine; furrow both ways with a small one-horse plough, about three feet each way; put about half a shovelful of fine compost manure in the corner of the furrows for the hill. I consider a small quantity of manure in the hill to be of great importance to the crop. The corn comes up quickly, is strong, and gets an early start. After it gets up about a foot high, the roots get hold of the old sward, and then it will go ahead, if you keep the weeds and grass down. Drop five or six kernels in the hill on top of the manure. If it comes up too thick, pull out at second hoeing. Four spears in a hill are better than more.

I plant my ground in corn but one year in succession, sowing down to grain the second year with hay seed. Good corn land is worth from $50 to $100 per acre.

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Crop, fifty bushels, at 75 cents per bushel
Corn-fodder on one acre when hay is worth $10 per ton

Cost
Gain

$37 50 600

43 50

27 25

16 25

Oats, Barley, Rye, Peas, and Beans.-Oats I consider to be the best and most profitable crop of grain at this time; yield, from 20 to 50 bushels per acre; price, from 35 to 60 cents per bushel; seed per acre, from two to three bushels. Barley, 20 or 30 years ago, yielded well, and made good feed for hogs and cattle; but for the last few years the crop has fallen off and been very light. Cause unknown to me. Rye, peas, and beans, not much cultivated for market. Hay is the best and most profitable crop we can cultivate for market; yield, from one to three tons per acre. Clover and herdsgrass are the best for market; seed per acre, a half bushel of herdsgrass and six pounds of clover. This, I think, is about the right quantity.

We press our hay in bales from 250 to 400 pounds each, and send to Boston and other markets on the railroad. Price varies from $10 to $20 per ton; common price about $14 at market; average price with us $10.

Hogs. The middling size white breed, I think, is the best; black hogs are no favorites of mine. Pork-raising for market, in our part of the country, since we have lost the potato crop by rotting, I think is an unprofitable business. We cannot raise pork as cheap as the farmers in the western States. I do not think corn worth more than 35 or 40 cents per bushel to make pork at the price it has been selling for in our markets for the last few years-say from $5 to $6 50 per hundred weight. Grain ground and cooked, I think, is decidedly the best, and should be given to hogs warm in cold weather.

Root Crops.-Turnips, carrots, and beets are all good roots to cultivate as a field crop. I should hardly know how to get through the winter with my cattle and hogs without some kind of roots. I succeed best with the ruta-baga turnip. Sow on old ground, in good condition, that has been cultivated one year; plough deep; harrow and pulverize it well a few days before sowing.

I like the plan best of sowing seeds in hills made by the common hoe-say two feet apart, about the same distance we plant white beans. At second hoeing, thin out all but two or three plants in a hill. Let them stand as far apart as possible. The great secret in cultivating roots is to have them thin enough to grow large; they will not do well if too thick on the ground; yield, from 400 to 800 bushels per acre.

Until

Potatoes. I cannot speak quite so well of potatoes at this time. within a few years they were considered to be one of the best root crops we cultivated, both as to home consumption and market value. We depended very much on them for fatting our beef and pork; but within the last few years the disease has taken hold of them and almost entirely destroyed the crop. I have not seen anything written on the subject to satisfy me as to the cause of it. Some have thought the rot was owing to the old seed, that the potatoes had been planted too long and had run out; but I am satisfied that is not the case. One year ago last spring, I sent to Buffalo, New York, and obtained a paper of potato seed-about a teaspoonful, with directions how to cultivate them. I sowed them in a hot-bed early in the spring. When the plants got to be three or four inches, I transplanted them in my garden, one plant in a hill, about two feet apart; hoed and cultivated them the same as other potatoes, and, to my surprise, the crops grew quite large, and at harvest time I found almost all kinds, colors, shapes, and sizes, from a pea to a turkey's egg; yield, about one and a half bushel. When I took them out of the

cellar last spring to plant, I found at least one half of them as diseased as any I had in the cellar. I planted, this last spring, those that were sound, and at harvest time in the fall, I found them almost all rotten. I think we shall have to give up cultivating potatoes at present, for it has been an unprofitable business. the last four or five years in this part of the country.

Fruit Culture is having increased attention. Apples and pears I consider to be a very profitable crop for market, and for feeding hogs and cattle. Peaches, plums, and grapes do not suceeed so well with us.

Very respectfully,

THOMAS W. KITTREDGE.

COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS.

SOUTH BARRE, VERMONT, January 1, 1851.

SIR: Having received one of the Circulars from your Office, the object of which is to collect information on the various branches of agriculture, I will give you a few facts, to which I have been an eye-witness, and I am confident if they were generally known would benefit mankind.

Clover.-Northern clover is one of the most important crops for seed grass and hay we have. It is a grass which roots deeper, and consequently gets nutriment deeper down, than any other grass here grown. Its leaf is broader, and covers more surface, and it also absorbs more nourishment from the atmosphere than most other grasses, and of course does not impoverish land, in proportion to its value, more than many other kinds of grass.

In the year 1849 the season was very dry, and all crops were very light. I had eight acres of new stocked clover. I mowed it as soon as the grass was ripe, threshed it, and got two bushels of seed per acre. In 1850 the season was very wet, and the clover on the eight-acre piece above mentioned was very tall, intermixed with red-top and white clover, producing from two to three tons per acre. Clover seldom seeds as well the second year as the first.

I noticed some seed in this. If I had let it all stand until the seed were fit to thresh, or mowed it all together, and let it lie until the chaff would thresh off, the hay would have been much impoverished, and the labor of handling it, together with the hay which would have been broken and lost in the chaff, would have been a great drawback on the crop of seed. To avoid all this, I took my cradle-scythe, which is four inches wide, and commenced cradling off the tops of the clover, taking off from four to six inches, (a man will cradle one acre per day.) I let the clover heads lie until they were dry, carted and threshed them with one-quarter the labor it would cost to mow and get them in the usual way. They yielded two bushels per acre. I mowed one acre of the stubble, and got one and a half ton of hay, which my cattle and sheep eat well. I then ploughed in the remainder, and shall probably get a good crop of wheat next year.

I will state my method of harvesting maize, (Indian corn,) which very much improves its value as an article of food. As soon as it becomes seared, cut it up, bind it with straw or grass in bundles which one man can handle, and hang it up on a pole, or joist, supported by props, or across a fence. Let it hang about three weeks, or until it gets dry; then husk and put the best ears into a crib, to be shelled when wanted for use.

In the year 1838, a road was laid through my farm three rods wide, on land of a black soil, the hard earth being within 18 inches of the surface. I ploughed the road, also a strip of land three rods wide each side of the road, and then scraped all the valuable soil from the strip three and a half rods wide (enough for the road and fence) on to the adjoining land each side of the road. The next spring I planted potatoes in it, and raised 400 bushels per acre, without

manure, (200 bushels being the average yield of the same land without this extra soil,) and it still continues to produce more than the adjoining land. I removed the soil from 15 square rods in a day with one team.

I will now state my method of making the road after this soil was removed. I commenced ploughing in the centre of the road; I ploughed it in the centre four times, (breaking the earth two rods wide,) then ploughed and scraped enough from the ditches to make a good road. It has required but little repair since, and will never need much, from the fact that it was made of hard earth, and there is nothing but hard earth within the bounds of the road to repair it with.

In 1846 I invented and put in operation an implement consisting of three rollers, or drums, for the purpose of rolling land in summer and roads in winter.* I have used it for four years past, and it has exceeded my most sanguine expectations in regard to its utility. One span of horses (weighing twelve hundred each) will roll from 20 to 25 acres per day. In winter, when the snow is one foot deep, four such horses will roll a road three miles per hour, leaving the track 12 feet wide, the snow being hard and smooth, and but three inches deep. On Monday, the 23d December, 1850, the snow fell in the vicinity where I live two feet deep, drifting on the road to the school-house one foot, making it three feet deep. On Tuesday we drew the roller over it twice, with three yoke of oxen and one horse, the weather being cold. On Wednesday I trotted my horse (weighing fourteen hundred) over this road, at the rate of eight miles per hour, drawing a sleigh and six persons, averaging in weight 120 pounds each, passing sleighs in perfect safety without breaking the trot, the horse's hoof not indenting the snow more than two inches, and the sleigh not cutting in more than half an inch. I have, in years past, commenced rolling when the first snow falls, repeating the rolling every snow storm, until, in some drifting places, the hard snow has accumulated to the depth of six feet, and have seen loaded teams pass each other as fearlessly and safely as an eagle will sail over our hills.

Another advantage is, that a wheel carriage is enabled, by the use of this roller, to run with ease and safety, enabling teams to cross over hills and vales in the spring, when the snow is melting and the ground is bare in spots. Again, when the snow is going off, it melts gradually, and does not gully the road, as it otherwise would. In 1848, one foot of snow fell in December. I rolled the road from my house to the village, (it being two miles.) Soon after the wind arose and blew the snow out of the road in spots, drifting it in other portions on all the roads in this vicinity. No more snow fell that winter. There was no good sleighing or wagoning on the roads that were not rolled all winter; but on the rolled roads we had both.

The cost of a triple roller here is $15, and I presume there are but few school or highway districts in Vermont, or in any of the neighboring States where snow abounds, which have not team enough to draw a roller. And it would be one of the greatest favors the State legislatures could confer on the people to pass an act requiring them to furnish themselves with rollers, and roll the roads of their respective districts every time the snow falls four inches. The same roller will be sufficient to roll the land for a whole district by putting on a body and a pair of thills to each roller-thus giving you three one-horse rollers.

[*The general nature of the implement, the details of which do not clearly appear from Mr. Thomson's drawing and description, is as follows: Two of the three rollers are placed in a line, on the same axle, four feet apart. The third one is placed some d stance behind, and rolls over the space left between the two front ones. The front rollers are four feet long, each, and the rear one five feet. They are all four feet in diameter, and are made in the form of drums; the heads of two inch, and the staves of one and a half inch plank. The machine is loaded as occasion requires.]

In regard to the utility of rolling land there is some dispute. One class of men affirm that more hay will be obtained in a given number of years, if the grass is mown above the stones and ridges, than would be if the stones were removed and the land rolled smooth and mown close. But the dry season of 1849, in our vicinity, has induced many to abandon that theory. The grass did not head out that season, and was only from four to six inches high; consequently, the stone and ridge advocates had no hay for their cattle, while those who removed the stones and rolled the land had enough hay for their cattle, and some to spare.

In 1848 I sowed six acres of oats in one piece, on land of a black soil, with hard earth within 18 inches of the surface, sowing on two and a half bushels of oats per acre. I rolled it all, except a strip two rods wide, through the middle of the piece. It produced 65 bushels per acre where it was rolled, and 40 where it was not rolled The oats were one week earlier where it was rolled. The roller works well, as hundreds will testify. I am often asked why I do not get it patented. My reply is, if I can see it in general use, and have the privilege of travelling where it has been used, it will be remuneration enough for me. Respectfully, yours,

JOHN THOMSON.

Hon. THOMAS EWBANK,

Commissioner of Patents.

sons.

LAFARGEVILLE P. O., TOWN OF ORLEANS, JEFFERSON Co., N. Y.,
December 21, 1850.

SIR: The most skilful husbandry remains unfruitful without propitious seaUnless cultivation is assisted by fertilizing rains, or unless, to use the words of the sacred writer, "He calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth," the labors and science of the husbandman are vain. Hence, in answering some of the questions of your Circular, the course of the weather being so intimately connected with agriculture as to reward or destroy, in the whole or in part, the labors of the farmer, it may not seem useless or uninteresting to say a word of the weather, as we often expe rience it in the northern part of this county during the season of tillage and harvest. The land being mostly level plateaux, gradually rising south from the Black river, and descending northerly towards the river St. Lawrence, or inclining westerly towards Lake Ontario, it follows that we are almost surrounded by two powerful water-currents, which seem, by common belief, to act with great force of attraction upon the gathering clouds which come within the power of the current of these rivers, and often expose us to extremes of wet and dry weather. The south part of the county, being surrounded by highlands, east and south, is generally better favored by natural limits, and less subjected to the same extremes; and the clouds brought with the southwest wind from the Lake, after encountering these obstructions to their passage onwards, whirl round, open upon the country by refreshing showers, and thence roll down the Black river. Our springs are variable, and it is not until June that the weather becomes settled. The spring rains have, then, mostly past; it grows warmer-sometimes hot; and showers are often needed. Well, the clouds are gathering, lightning flashes, we hear the roll of distant thunder; the storm hovers around us for a while, as if uncertain which course to pursue; we hope and prepare for a shower; vegetation is suffering. Suddenly the clouds are set in motion, and, descending, follow the current of either river; and some parts of the country only, as they lie near or under the outer edge of the storm, receive a slight sprinkling. It is a common observation that the storm must gather

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