JOTTINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1290, 19 November 1896, Page 6

JOTTINGS.

On killing weeds by wholesale, L. B. Pierce contributes the following remarks to The Country Gentleman : —One of my neighbours has a scheme for cleaning potato ground of weeds, • which I have never seen practised elsewhere. He ploughs about two weeks before planting, and fits the ground very thoroughly after the weeds have sprouted, finishing with the float. He then plants with a planter, and eight or ten day 3 later, before the potatoes have appeared in sight, he goes over it again with a float. His float i 3 the ordinary one, made of three scantlings about ten feet long, upon which h 9 rides. This levels and pulverises the earth, and kills all weeds that may have escaped before or started since planting ; the result is that there is -scarcely a weed to 'be killed by the cultivator. He cultivates with a two-horse cultivator, throwing the earth close against the plants, and the result of this thorough work, even in a wet season, is that not more than a bushel of weeds could be gathered upon an eighteen-acre field. The planter puts the potatoes down to such a depth in the ground that the floating does not disturb the seed at all, the ground being quite even and regular from the floating previous to planting.

A well-fed pig often makes an average gain of a pound per day for the first eight to ten months of his life. Such an increase in weight as this requires that the animals have good digestion. To insure this while young, the pig should be fed what can. be easily digested, and that a portion of it should be succulent. Overtaxing the digestive organs while the pigs are young stunt their growth, and such pigs will never attain the size than would be”possible for them if properly fed while young. Milk is the best food for young pigs, supplemented with wheat middlings if the milk is not sufficient. As soon as the grass starts they should be put in a pasture or orchard to eat what grass and fallen fruit they can eret during the summer. If such pigs are fed liberally their digestion will always be good.

The question may be asked, says the writer of Scraps in the Live Stock Journal ), is there any constant connection between certain colours of hair and quality of hair or quality of flesh ; any evidence of correlation between the colour of the coat and the quality of either the coat itself or the flesh ? An old grazier in the North of England some forty years ago used to declare that he thought if he were blindfolded ho could distinguish the red cows in a hord from those of any other colour by their superior “ quality"; a term by which he was understood to mean mellowness indicative of readiness to fatten generously at moderate cost, and flesh of a good sort when what the butcher terms “ ripe." Some experienced breeders have asserted that this superiority is associated mostly with the paler or yellowish red, and that the deeper colours, blood-red or cherry-red, although often found associated with hardier constitution than that of the average yellow-red animal, are not generally found together with an equally great tendency to fatten.

It is doubtful, indeed, whether any absolute rule has been established, but the concurring testimony of many authorities, who have spoken from long personal experience, contrains one to give the subject some little attention, and bear in mind such testimony upon every opportunity of noticing the comparative powers and qualities and constitutional strength of animals of various colours. It has been said that deep red animals bred to that colour and shade for many generations have a tendency to grow hair of a somewhat wiry character ; but this may be, in the instances observed, from which the

inference has been drawn, the result of another cause than correlation of colour and quality. The climate of the country, for example, or the pasturage of the district, where the experiment of founding a red breed, or a red variety of a breed of mixed colours, like the Shorthorn, lias been carried out, might be specially un favourable to the growth of soft, mossy hair. We have seen on red Shorthorns some of the best qualities of hair, and the all-red Devon breed is scarcely open to a charge of coarse-coatedness.