THE FARMERS' NOTE-BOOK.

Otago Witness, Issue 64, 7 August 1852, Page 3

THE FARMERS' NOTE-BOOK.

We give to our readers a few extracts from a most interesting work — " Johnston's Notes on North America" — lately published in Edinburgh, and reviewed in the " Journal of Agriculture." The author is " the talented Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in the University of Durham. By his admirable Lectures and other works, which have obtained for him a more than European reputation, and by his general zeal for the improvement of Agriculture, he has won for himself a name that will not soon be forgotten by the farmers of Britain." The reviewer thus sets out —

The faint old plough-marks which the hunter meets with on our lone Highland hills, far up on their desert slopes, hundreds of feet above the present zone of cultivation, and which seem so strange and preternatural that the peasants name them the Elfin Furrows, are not less remarkable in the eyes of the thoughtful traveller as the mouldering remains of an industrious hut long-forgotten civilisation. Let us hope that the plough will again revisit those lone places ; that the tide of cultivation, after

its long low ebb, will again flow upwafd to its old. marks; that the yellow corn may once more displace the barren lustre of the purple heath, and the lone domain of the gorcock become the residence of happy and industrious man.*

This desirable period may not be so distant as to some it appears. "Within the last quarter of a century^ what has not Agriculture done among us ? and how little has it merited — nay, how triumphantly has it falsified, the taunts of its selfish defamers ! To speak of nothing else, what skill and what energy have been displayed in procuring for our poor soils the elements of fertility ! They who talk of farmers ever sticking like limpets to the rock — ever clinging obstinately to old ways, old prejudices, while the world around them is hasting on faster and faster— talk so from very ignorance. They forget the many great changes in farming that this century has witnessed. They forget the revolution in agriculture that was necessary ere the very first step in manuring was generally accomplished — the planting of green crops, the buying of live stock, the building of sheds and courts and byres, and the subsequent thousand and one experiments in feeding. But as agriculture advanced, the difficulty increased. Each year brought new demands on behalf of the hard-tasked soil, and the manures of the farmyard were soon found inadequate to meet them. Let us see what followed — it will show whether farmers be indeed the stand-still dunces which some men have not scrupled to call them.

Bone-dust being found an excellent fertiliser, mills were forthwith erected ; nay, wide Europe was ransacked for this new and potent agent of fertility. But the yield soon became inadequate for the demand. Farmers were puzzled what to do, till at length another agent of fertility was found upon the lone islets of the Southern seas, when ship after ship sailed, and returned laden with guano. This expensive manure in turn grew scarce, and farmers were again compelled to seek fertilising substances from other sources.

To crown all, — and as if the wealth and enterprise of England made her in truth the world's Queen, and supplied her necessities by tribute from every clime, — last year an " animal manure" began to be forwarded to us from Buenos Ayres. The countless herds that overspread the Brazilian Pampas used formerly to be slaughtered solely for the sake of their hides. But time and experience teach wisdom : the tallow and the best part of the flesh are now saved for use, and the remaining mass of dry flesh and bones is being exported as a manure. This animal matter has been found, in theoretical value, to be "nearer to guano than to any other manure," and superior to it in regard to the gradual liberation of ammonia ; and doubtless it may now be regarded as a standard auxiliary to the agriculture of our islands.

Professor Johnston, in the course of his travels, observed many beds and rocks of gypsum and phosphate of lime; and he not only endeavoured to instruct the Americans in the value of these rocks to their own agriculture, but suggested that they would find it profitable to export the latter of these substances to England. His advice has been acted upon ; the first consignments have reached Liverpool ; and thus a new and valuable supply of fertilising matter is being opened up to us.

An extensive traffic is also carried on at L'Etang Harbour, on the Bay of Fundy, where lime is burned in considerable quantities for export to Boston ; about a cord of wood being used for each ton of lime. The rock here is blue limestone, — in thin beds interstratified with metaphoric clay-slate, and in thick layers of twenty or thirty feet, forming distinct rocky elevations, which are seen to run inland for a considerable distance.

Our readers may derive some useful hints from the following paragraphs of Mr. Johnston's work, which give the author's remarks on the beneficial action of this fertilising substance, and the mode of applying it adopted in the counties of western New York :—: —

" Plaster or gypsum is extensively used in this neighbourhood, being almost the only manuring which a large portion of the land receives. It is obtained abundantly among the beds of the Onondaga salt-group, and is applied in the unburned state. It is crushed in mills, where it is sold in the state of powder at 3d. a

* Among many interesting evidences of the former fertility and populousness of the now barren wilds of Scotland, take the following, from Mr. Wilson's recent work on the Ardtceology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland: — " About four miles inland, on the north side of the Cromarty Firth, is a ■moor which the proprietor is reclaiming from the •wild waste, and restoring once more to the profitable service of man. In the progress of this good work, abundant evidence demonstrated the fact, that the same area from which the accumulated vegetable mass of many centuries is now being removed, had formed the scene of a busy, intelligent, and industrious population, ere the first growth of this barren produce indicated its- abandonment to solitude and sterility."

bushel, or a dollar and a half per" ton of 25 bushels.- The maize is plastered either oneei broadcast, at the rate of 3 bushels an acre* or" twice with the hand, upon each hill after each hoeing,' at the rate of 1 bushel an acre. I saw four rows in the fine field of Indian corn I walked through which had not been plastered, while all the rest had— once only at the rate of a bushel an acre j and the difference in favour of the plastered part was very striking to" the eye. Oats are also much benefited by plaster* especially in a dry season j and it brings away clover, and makes it very tall. It is likewise believed to improve the potatoes which are planted without manure. I caused a number of plants of the potatoes to which gypsum had and had not been applied to be dug up, and certainly the number and size of the potatoes found at the roots, as well as the height of the 1 stefmsj were greatly in favour of the plastered part. It was applied before hoeing, and then drawn up afound them. It is usual to put it in with the sets ; but it was put around the young plants this year, " only because," said Mr. Geddes, •' the drought was such that I saw if something was not done I should have no crop at all." An English farmer would hardly believe he had done anything towards saving a crop of -potatoes if he had only sprinkled a bushel of gypsum over an acre of the land in which his potatoes were growing." By far the largest and most valuable stores of mineral manure are to be found in Canada and northern New York, where they exist in the shape of metaphoric limestone, unusually rich in phosphate of lime. " Such a limestone rock," says Professor Johnston, " in easily accessible parts of Great Britain, would be as surer a source of permanent wealth as a mine of Californian gold.' One economical fact is certain — it is of great value to the neighbourhood in which it exists, where it cm be readily quarried and burned for lime, to be used in agriculture } and upon the exhausted wheat-soils of Canada, when properly prepared and applied, its use would be invaluable. A new manure brought within our reach, especially one so valuable as phosphate of lime, would beat any time a great benefit ; and it is especially so now, when our farmers are exposed to an oppressive competition with countries where labour and land are cheap, and taxes nominal. Of the agriculture of America there is little to be said — and, except warnings, nothing to be learned. In every respect it forms a re* markable contrast to that of China. While economy of manure and permanent fertility of soil are everywhere witnessed among those " oldest of Tories," the plodding unspeculative inhabitants of the Celestial Kingdom, waste and exhaustion characterise the farming of the " go-ahead" people of the United States- Land is so cheap in America that it is more profitable to buy new farms than to manure the old ; and thus the great wheat-region of the New World is ever retiring further and further from the shores of the Atlantic. Secondly, it is more profitable to invest money in other businesses than in land, as farming yields on the average but 5 per cent., while the common rate of interest is 2 per cent, higher. Thirdly, landproperty is less sought after in America than in almost any other country :—(1): — (1) because unsuited to the'migratory spirit of the people, and (2) because it attracts the jealousy and ill-will of the democrats, from the political influence supposed to be exercised by the landowner over his tenants. Fourthly and lastly, agriculture in America is impeded by the high price of labour, which renders fanning on an extended scale unprofitable, and practically denies to the farmer any other aid than that of his own family. The bad effect on agriculture of the second and fourth of these causes is thus expressed by a practical farmer from Syracuse, in western New York :—: —

" The results of my personal experience are, that money is not to be made by farming in this State. If a farmer hire TWO men, and work with them, and keep them at their work, he may maintain his family, and clear 8 per cent, upon the value of his farm. But if he farm more largely, as a gentleman farmer, leaving the management to an overseer, he will not make more than perhaps 2 or 3 per cent. Farming is much less profitable in my county of Onondaga, during the last five years, than it used to be. Exhaustion has diminished the produce of wheat, formerly the great staple of the country. When the wheat fell off, barley, which at first yielded 50 or 60 bushels, was raised j'ear after year, till the land fell away from this also, and* became full of weeds. It still grows 50 bushels of Indian corn, and this is the best crop we now get — but it must be manured. Much is now laid down to grass to be recruited; but those who are anxious to make money are turning their hands to something else, and either selling or letting their farms. A farm in a good situation can be let to pay 5 per cent. ; but as 7 per cent, is easy to be got for money, few persons care to continue the owners of farms which they cannot cultivate themselves, and can only let to yield a return like this."

A kind of listless-ness creeps over the second and third generation of the Americans-born, both in the British provinces and in the States. And Mr. Johnston remarks, that after an immigrant farmer and his sons have attained to competence, " the progress is not so rapid, and a man cannot himself, or through his sons, progress indefinitely in wealth and station as at home." The unprofitableness of farming on a large scale is assigned as the explanation of this remarkable fact by the people themselves ; and this, "if true, satisfactorily enough accounts for the greater industry and energy of the poorest, and the slackened exertions of- th» better off."