THE FARM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 956, 27 June 1890, Page 14

THE FARM.

THE CHESHIRE BREED OF SWINE. White swine are still the favourites in the Eastern States, though the black or black and white breeds predominate in the prairie and Western regions, the former, the so-called Cheshire breed is one which possesses many points of excellence, though it has not yet attained so wide a popularity as some others. The name * Cheshire ’ is wholly arbitrary, having no local or historical significance. But it has a rleasant English sound, and does not hurt the hogs. The only inconvenience arising from 'ts use is that it • ometiraes confounds them in the minds of fair committees with the Chester whites, which they resemble only in colour. The breed, as such, is wholly of 'merman origin, arid when a man talks about ‘imported Cheshires ’heis in errnx 1 . The English breed which most nearly resemble our Cue-hire is the famous white Coleshill. ' The breed known as Cheshire originated in Jefferson County, NY., between thirty and forty years ago. It was evolved from the large white, with an infusion of Suffolk to obtain more refined, compact f >r:n, and earlier maturity. They were first exhibited under the name of Jefferson county hogs. It is not quite clear when the pres- ut name was first adopted, but it has become generally recognised as the permanent name of the breed.

The general appearance of the Cheshires rn-.y he judged from the following offbeat Standard of Excell-'hcs ‘ Ilea-i, short to medium in length, short m proporffou to the letiv.th of body ; face, somewhat dished t*nd wide between the eyes ; ears, small, erect, in old aaimals often slightly pointing forward ; neck, short ; shoulders, broad and full; hips, broad ; body, long, broad, and deep ; hams, broad, nearly straight with back, and running well down toward hock ; legs, small and slim, set well apart, and supporting the body on the toes ; tail, small and thin ; hair, fine, medium in thickness and quantity; colour, white, a few blue spots in skin not to disqualify, but objectionable. When grown aqd well-fattened should

dress from 400 to 600 pounds.’ Two great points claimed for the Cheshires are early maturity and fine quality .of meat. Numerous instances are related in which pigs which were well fed and cared for have dressed from 300 to 400 pounds at nine months old. The carcase is not a mere mass of lard, but, if killed young, the moat is nicely marbled with layers of lean and fat. The hams are heavy, juicy, and fine-grained. The Cheshires are quiet and contented in disposition, and the sows are quite prolific. A farmer in central New York last summer showed the writer of these two Cheshire sows, mother and daughter, which he had kept, the one four, and the other three years. During that time he bad sold seventy-two pigs from the older, and sixtysix from the younger. At an average prioo of three dollars each, the sales of pigs had brought him an aggregate of 414d015. ‘ And,’ he added, ‘ their feeding has cost nothing but the run of a small pasture lot, and a part of the skim milk and buttermilk from the dairy.’ The ‘ Cheshire Swine Breeders’ Association ’ is a society of the responsible breeders of Cheshire swine, organised for the purpose of preserving a ‘ trustworthy public registry, which Bhall be accepted as final authority on all matters of pedigree ; maintain the purity of blood of the breed, and tend to the forming of a uniform type of Cheshires.’ The present officers of the association are as follows :—President, R. E. Coe ; vice-presi-dent, G. O. Holcomb ; secretary and treasurer, E. W. Davis. The first volume of the Cheshire herd-book was published last year. It contains the pedigrees of '715 boars and sows, owned by 160 individuals and firms. Of these there are sixty-seven resident in the State of New York, the others being scattered through other States, from Maine to Kansas.

The breeds of Bwine chiefly raised and fattened in the great corn-belt of the United States have proved themselves to be so well adapted to the situation that no other breed can be expected to replace them there. But, for the small farmer, with whom swinebreeding and pork-making is an incident rather than the main business, the Cheshires are well worthy of consideration. But no breed is exempt from the necessity of proper care and good feeding. The Cheshire must have this, to be grown at a profit. The Cheshire, even more than other breeds, seems to like and thrive upon a clover pasture. DRILLING OATS. Experience is against the use of the drill in seeding oats. As the drill was developed earlier than the broadcast seeder, there were better reasons for drilling oats then than there are now. Broadcast seeders do the work so well, and can be had at such moderate prices, that it is unnecessary to drill the grain to have it evenly distributed, even in windy weather. Harrows have been so much improved that broadcasted grain may be nicely covered on any ground properly prepared. The drills are very useful for fall wheat, as the snow is better held over the plants, and the ridges crumble down on the roots heaved out by frost. But, manifestly, these benefits cannot accrue to oats. Oats require all the moisture they can get, and all the root-shading the plant will give, during the latter two-thirds of their period of growth ; and moisture is better retained in the soil, and the roots are better shaded, when the plants stand at comparatively uniform dietances, and the surface is made level, than when the plants are placed in drills, and the surface is thrown up into ridges. To use the drill satisfactorily, the ground must be put iu good condition ; and this probably explains why there is frequently a better yield from drilling. We do not know of a case where broadcasting and drilling oats were testedside by side for several years, that the broadcasting did not give the better aggregate return. The farmer is not advised never to drill oats ; but it would certainly be best to make the trial on a limited scale for three or four years, at least, until the superiority of drilling is proven. THE FARMERS OF INDIA (FRANK G. CARPENTER, IST TUB AMERIGAN AGRICCTLTTI. IST.'. India is the land where the greatest part of the opium of the world is raised. It is a eonntrv where quinine is '-eing experimentally cultivated. The Himalaya Mountains, which bound it at the north, are the home of the tea-plant ; and Indian tea within tbe past three or four years Pas b come more popular than that of China or Japan. India is the land of indigo. It is the land of coffee and spices. It is the land of lice. Its cotton competes with ours, and it 3 tobacco is exported to Europe. India has a wheatgrowing area as large as all the fields planted in wheat in the Unit--d States. It is inore.-i - iug it 3 wheat farms every year h v ' i rogation, and its irrigation work- are great-! t an those of any other country in the world. It is the b ! ggest farm on the face of th ■ giu’.o, and if a fence-could be built around it triangular borders each side woul i be 2000 miles in length, or as long ns ; i om N< w \ or k to Denver. This immense area is oac ed full of the hardest working, most economic!. 1 and most persevering farmers .on the taoe of the globe. The population of India Is more than 250,000,000; and of every six men, women, and children in the world one lives in India. Of these masses fully 90 per cent are supported directly from the soil, and India has 58,000,000 men who get their living by farming, or nearly as many men as we have men, women, and children in the United States.

The density of the population can hardly be comprehended, In some of the provinces

through which I travelled there were 12S0 persons, by actual statistics, living on each cultivated square mile. A square mile is a section of laud, and it would make four of our farms of a quarter section each. The average of population in the United States is six people to each such farm, or twenty-six acres for each person. In these Indian provinces two persons had to exist off the products of every acre and 320 persons got their living out of each 160-acre farm. In some of the districts the people are so many that the population loses its actual increase and remains the same from year to year. Everywhere I found the farmers terribly poor, aud everything connected with them was managed on a starvation basis. The masses wore nothing but two strips of thin cotton cloth, and eighty out of every hundred people went barefooted. About Calcutta and in Bengal, which contains some of the richest soil in India, starvation looked out of the dusky faces of the Hindoos, and in the 2000 odd miles which I travelled through North India I did not see one mau or woman who had calves on his or her legs as big as tho biceps musics of the arms of a healthy sixteen-year-uld American boy. The labouring people are skin and bone, and it is wonderful how they work all day under the broiling sun of tho tropics, with only a little bit of rice or gruel to eat and nothing but water to drink. In the opium districts I found farmers feeding their children on opium to takeaway their hunger and to reduce their sensibility to the cold, and nowhere did I find the average farmhouse better than the American pig-pen, and the majority of the farmers live in low huts made of mud bricks dried in the sun. The farmers in ludia do not live upon their farms. They exist together like bees in little villages, and you see these villages dotting the landscape on every side. They are made up entirely of these mud huts, and you find in them no street lamps, no big schoolhouses, no town council halls, and none of the surroundings of the American town, The huts are from six to fifteen feet square, the roofs of whi h are thatched with straw or covered with thin earthen tiles. There are no chimneys, and the smoke finds its way out of the door or from under the eaves. Some of the better houses have low mud walls around them, and upon these walls you see lumps of brown cow-droppings about the size and shape of a buckwheat cake. You see tens of thousands of these cakes in every town. They ornament the sides of the huts as well as the walls, and wheu dried they are packed away in piles and bought and sold. They constitute the fuel of the family, and have been plastered there to dry The droppings are gathered by the women, who carry them in baskets to the front doors of their homes, mix them with dirt and pat them into shape with their hands. Such fuelis used all over India, and the soil gets bub little in the shape of fertilisation. The Indian farmer’s wife seldom has a cookiug.str.ve. She cooks upon the floor, and the floor is of mud. The walls are uupla&tered. The family have no chairs, and the chief piece of furniture is a rough wooden framework, over which cerds are tied, forming a bed. The huts are so small that these beds are put outside during the day, and the beds are seldom more than four fee 1 loog and three feet wide. The farmer and his family lie spoon fashion upon them, in the same clotbe3 they wear in the daytime. If they would stretch out their legs they would have to hang them over the side ofthe bed.

There are no bams to he seen in the farming country of India, and in the past the wheat has been piled up on the ground until floods and rains have destroyed much of the crop. This will, however, be changed this year. I was told by our consul at Bombay that Chicago men had recently come to India to build a vast elevator system, which would result in the wheat being better taken oare of and would increase the amount exported to Europe.

The farming tools of India are as rude as the dwellings. The plough is little more than a sharpened stick, and it is so light that the farmer carries it to his field on his shoulders. His furrows are mere scratches on the surface of the ground, but he goes over the field so often that the soil is thoroughly pulverised. In addition to his plough he lias a hoe and a mattock, and these implements are the same as those used by his forefathers centuries ago. His whole farming outfit could be bought for ten dollars. He harvests some of his orops with a sickle, but the most of the wheat is pulled from the ground, and the stubble is always saved for feed for his cattle or for fuel. Nothing that can be burnt or eaten is ever wasted, and the weeds are saved for the cooking tires. Tbe grinding of meal for the family is done in the same pristine way as described in tbe scriptures. Tbe women move two stones about one over tbe other and the grain is ciU3hed between them. There are no roller patent processes in the East, and throughout India, China, Japan, and Egypt, I saw mills of this kind in ute. It is generally supposed that the East Indians subsist entirely upon rice. This is a mistake. Only about one. fourth the ponulation of India are riceeaters. In the northern part of the country wheat is largely used, and millet i-* ground up everywhere an-i made into bread. Millet is in fact the staple foi d grain o f India. It is rais.-d throughout nearly the whole of Hindustan. The fi'ast Indians' are not stock farmers. Tile Hindoo p as-nts will have nothing to do with pigs or fowls. Toe only animals they keep aie horses and cows, and the cattle all uV o. Jnrii-. are of the sacred cow variety (Bos Indicus). These are magnifier nfc animals, of a dove or ILht yellow colour, po-ses-ing the aristocratic air of the wellbred Jersey and the big fiatnc of the Hoisteins and Shorth- rns, 3 hey have great humps u>.»m their s'nouhieis, wl i ;h rise, fully six inches above the rest of the Lack and which, strange to say, look by no means out of place. The Hindoos worship these cows, and I visited at Benares a noted temple iu which a hundred sacred bulls were prayed to every day. It was in the centre of the city, and it looked more like a stable than a temple. Imagine a stone court about the size of a barn-yard, with an immense low band-stand in the cantre. Around the court let there be a row of stalls in which a hundred of these sacred bulls, with these

big humps on their banks and with silky ears hanging down like those of a rabbit, Btand with their- heads toward the court. About the court other bulls are moving, and the sloDpy. dirty, stone floor is filled with men and women having the dark, handsome features of the Hindoos. They hold up their hands before the balls and pray. Pretty girls feed them with garlands of bright flowers, and at the edge of the court an old priest sits and puts a red mark on the forehead of each worshipper as he goes out. Now and then the bulls roar and Btamp their feet, but, as a rule, they are as gentle as pet rabbits, and all of them are as fat as butter. The Hindoos rub the manure of these cattle over their floors, and they not infrequently put their urine upon their faces. They bring water from the Ganges and offer it to them, and they would much sooner eat their grandfathers than condemn themselves to damnation by chewing beefsteak. Their scruples, however, do not preveut their using these cattle as beasts of burden, and, from Singapore to Bombay, I saw carts drawn by these beautiful shoulder-humped animals, and in many of the fields I saw men ploughing with them. The only other beast in common use in India is the water-buffalo, which is as ugly as the sacred cow is beautiful. It seems to be a kind of cross between tha pig aud the hippopotamus, and has wide, flat, curved horns, a neck which comes straight out from the shoulders, and a belly which is bloated and ill-sbapen. Its skin is covered with thin straggling black hair, which looks more like the bristles of a hog than the hair of a cow. It delights in wallowing in the dirt, and it is the most plebeian species of the genus bos. The sacred cows are milked, and the butter made from them is clarified and used by the Hindoos for cooking. A Hindoo will never use lard or tallow in any shape, and the Sepoy mutiny was caused, it will be remembered, by the story being circulated that the cartridges which the Indian Boldiers hasl to bite were greased. One of the curious sights of India is the farmer’s pleasure-buggy. It is a sulky-like affair, made of bamboo fishing-rods, and is covered with a red cloth. It is drawn by one of these sacred bulls, some breeds of which are famous for their trotting qualities and which can make almost as good time aB the average horse The driver sits on the shafts in front, and there is just enough rhom under the cover at the back for one or two people to sit cross-legged. When a farmer wishes to travel from one part of the country to another he gets into one of these carts, and, if he is a wealthy man, he will have a richly coloured blanket to put over his bullock. I t >ok a ride npon one of them and found it as easy as any sulky I have ever tried in America. There are no fences about the farms in India. W r ooden fences would be an impossibility, even if they were needed. The white ant 9 are the great pest oF the country, and these will eat up anything wooden. India has a vast network of telegraph lines covering the whole Peninsula, and the poles for these are made of galvanized iron. The ties of the railroads have to be made of iron, and such few fences as I saw along the railroads were made of barbed wire fastened to sandstone posts. The great wheat-growing districts of India are in the north, and in the nortb-weat provinces about fifty-seven per cent of the country is used for wheat. The variety planted is not as good as that of Australia or California, bat it is good enough to find a market in England, and the exports continue to increase from year to year. The English government is doing all it can to extend the wheat area, and I was told in India that the amount produced in the future would be much more than that of the past. The average is about thirteen bushels per acre, and with the new elevator system, the amount saved will be much larger. The wheat is largely thrashed by being trodden out bv bullocks and buffaloes. I saw but little flailing, and there are no big American threshing machines. India can raise wheat much more cheaply than we can. It costs the Indian farmer practically nothing to live, and farm wages are from six to eight cents a day. Whole families live on fifty cents a week, and I have never found a man more willing to work for small wages than the East Indian. There is little idleness among these 250,000,000 of people, and it is the only country in the world where the people seem to work all d9y, and every day, and to have nothing whatever hut their existence as their reward. Notwithstanding theii crowded condition and their small farms, they are over-loaded with taxes, and the main part of the revenues which England collects from Ddia comes from these farms. England gets $109,000,000 a year from these dusky living skeletons, and she pays her servants up the land among them, as to many of the most profitable crops, so that one man cannot have a monopoly, and so that few can make more than a competency. This is especially so as to the opium farming. The opium fields are all under mortgage to the government. The government officers give out the seed, regulate the amount of land that the farrm-r shall plant, and make him agree to sell his crop to the government at a certain fixed price. The theory they go on is that England owns the land and that the people pay a rent to her in taxes. The principle is, that the people Bhould give the government one-third of their oops. It is true that they do nob give nearly so much, but the taxes are out of all proportion greater than in England and America, and it is no wonder that the people are poor. The only wonder is that they exist at all. BREED OR FEED. The question in our heading may he taken as the type of a class of farm topics too often seriously discussed in the agricultural papers as of real practical importance. The fallacy of such propositions is readily detected by those who have correct notions of the principles of practical farm economy, while the careless or superficial observer is easily misled by them. The engineer who should propose for discussion the relative merits of the steam-engine and coal would be looked upon as an ignoramus, whose opinions were not worth considering. Yet farmers are seriously asked to disoues the parallel conun-

drum of ‘breed or feed.’ The various breeds of domesticated animals have had their origin in accordance with the laws of evolution, aud each has peculiar qualities that adapt it to a particular purpose, and the=e can only be retained by a system of management in harmony with the conditions that have led to their development. From this it must be seen that the purpose in view and the prescribed conditions of management must determine the choice of breeds for a particular farm. It is also evident, in the light of our knowledge of the distinguishing characteristics of the different breeds, and the different purposes to which they arc adapted, that it is an absurd waste of time and money to experiments with these breeds, under the same conditions, to determine which is best. The widely-different characteristics of the improved breeds renders any inch comparison fallacious. Each is valuable in its own way, with qualities peculiar to itself, and it cannot be brought into direct competition with others of different habits and tendencies. It would be quite as consistent to undertake experiments to determine whether an apple is better than a pear, or a turnip better than a potato. Each has qualities of its own that give it a special value, and they are not, therefore, directly comparable. Animals should be looked upon as machines for converting their food into animal products of greater value. These machines have, fortunately, been developed in great variety, so that, by judicious selection, various kinds of raw material, in the form of food, may be economically converted into a variety of aseful products. The farm, then, is, in effect, a factory, fitted with proper machinery for manufacturing special animal products from the produce of the fields, and it is well for the farmer that the machinery at his command is not all of one pattern, and fitted for a single purpose. As in other mauafactures, the best results can only be obtained by a suitable adaptation of the machinery to the work required of it, so that the food may be utilised with the least waste and the largest return in the desired product secured. It will not pay to put machinery, especially adapted to work cotton, into a woollen factory, or attempt to make carpets in a factory fitted for making light cotton goods. The great advance in manufactures of all kinds has been brought about by the intelligent adjustment of machinery to the special work required, to economise labour avoid all possible wastes, and secure the greatest returns for the raw material worked up, while the profits are the aggregate of many small items, each of which in itself is inconsiderable. The farmer Bhould exercise the same intelligent skill in the harmonious adjustment of the several factors of production he has to deal with, so that each may supplement the others, and the aggregate of small items! may be made to apear as substantial contributions to the margin of profits. In order to realise the advantages of this thorough system, the breed must be adapted to the requirements of the farm for the soeoial purpose in view, and the system of feeding and management must be planned to contribute its full share to the desired results by conforming to the habits and inherited tendencies of the animal that has been selected, in order to secure the largest net returns for the capital invested. This can only be done by a strict conformity to the biological and economic laws on which the principles of farm management are founded. Investigations and discussions in which these laws are ignorsd will not tend to promote the development of an improved system of agriculture.—American Agriculturist. PIGS FOR PROFIT. There was a time when farmers, some of them, could possibly afford to rear pigs for pictures of fancy. That day has gone by. This kind of sentiment went out suddenly, with me, one day when butchering time came, and I found it took two and one-half of dressed and fancy pigs to weigh as much as one dressed pig horu and reared for utility. They were all of about the same age, and had the same chance for pasture-., apples, and other food. The pigs with the long bodies were natural foragers. They took kindly to apples. They ate grass when very young, and they kept at it. This was. to them, food—as it is to the cow or the steer. They converted it into meat. They had the jaws to grasp the grass, long or short,, and thejawato eat—masticateit. Jaws, then, r re wor -hso-ne-ttling to a pig. They are tools to work with. A stub nose and a dished jaw are fitted for doing nothing. Such a hog, thus adorned with the extremity a fanciful civilisation has put on him, is made necessarily a helpless ornament to the farm. Of course if one has a taste that way and can afford it, it is all rigb t; but I have a text with another meaning. There is not so much money in the trough as there used to be. Our pig money must now come more out of the pasture, the clover, the orchard, and other cheaper,foods. Money can be made out of pigs and pasture, with middlings, and the corn from the starch-mills. We must grow pigs for meat. The chunky pigs do not thus abound. The longbodied nigs are the ones we want for pork to cut up for fresh meat, and also for salting. They will have the mo3t lean meat. They are the best to produce numbers of pigs and sustenance. Their young are larger at birth and more active. The start at birth, with more size and more milk, was one of . the reasons why one of my utility pigs was equal at s'augbtertotwoanda half of the fancy ones. Look at the profit—two and a half lives to he supported as against one. The coming demand is not for pork in the lard sense, but meat in the muscle sense. An active hog will naf u -ally make more muscle and make it faster than an inactive or sluggish one. The s’uggish one will fill up with fat, if fed enough. The active pig is more healthy, and its meat is better. It will have a better flavour. Sluggishness dries up the secretions and thickeris the blood. Any farmer who has a tolerable orchard should seed it with orchard grass, and stock it with hogs. Keep a few breeding sows, with long bodies and medium bone, and cross them with sires as good as they are. There will be no trouble about the pigs maturing. This word means nothing, as it Is generally used, but fat. The pigs of the kind of hogs I name will grow, and grow fast. Growth is what we

want, and whenthegrowthhasreachedapoint fitted for market of sufficient weight, either fifty,seventy five,oror.e hundred pounds, then put the pigs into the market and have more coming on. to fill their places. This can be easily doneby by feeding the pigs inside pens, or enclosures by themselves. When thus managed, the sows can be taken from the field—the pigs will hardly miss them—and be bred again. It does not pay to try to feed pigs through their mothers after they are six week 3 old. They will do better to have all the extra food by themselves. The sows in this way can be made to have two litters each year, and the later ones can be sold for roasters, when they will dress about fifteen pounds. It is a mistake to use a small dam for a breeder, or one of a small breed, and it is about as much of a mistake to use a Bire of a small breed. There has been quite an idea of using pure bred hogs of the smaller breeds for sires on the ground that the offspring would mature quicker. This is a mistake. If we want meat and weight soonest, use the sires of any medium sized breed rather than of the small breeds. It is cheaper to make growth than it is to make fat. Fat is the costliest part of an animal, and of .Jhe least value as a food. We have become used to the sight of helpless hogs for our pork. Custom has made this idea ; but it is erroneous, nevertheless. The pig well filled out all round, with muscles well and largely developed, rounded and smooth, and still active, is a better pig to be served upon the table than one helpless, Btuffed, and feverish with fat. The butcher who has the hog fatted lean will always want more, and so will the customer. The line of grain-feeding should be middlings, rye, or, wheat; for a single food ; oats also ; bailey and bran, or for a change, corn and bran, with twice more bran than barley, or corn and linseed meal for a regulator and as daily food. SHEEP SALES IN ENGLANDThe sales of well-bred sheep in England during the past season were mostly marked by sharp competition arid good prices. In onesalo of Shropshires at Shrewsbury over 2000 sheep from various flocks were sold. Prices for ram lambs ranged from five to eighteen guineas each. At a sale in Birmingham an equal ■j number was sold, one aged ram selling for two I hundred guineas, and another for one hundied ■j and seventy guineas. A sale of Doi'set horned sheep is reported, at which one ram sold for J eight guineas, and lambs from sixty-five to 1 ninety-two shillings. At a sale of Hampshire ) Downs 5000 animals were sold, mostly wether^.