Agricultural and Pastoral.

Otago Witness, Issue 824, 13 September 1867, Page 14

Agricultural and Pastoral.

ITEMS FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FARMERS' CLUB.

Oats do not help to preserve eggs ; they are best to pack them. The best material for preserving them is charcoal dust. Prof. Nyce has had them in his fruithouse in charcoal nine months, and it was difficult to tell them from fresh eggs.

Fruit will keep a long time in a room at a constant temperature of 34 degrees. Such a room, however, only can be obtained by being constructed on purpose, with hollow walls, filled with tan bark or sawdust, while an ice-chamber is overhead. On the floor should be placed the bitterns of salt for the absorption of all gasses. This is an outline of the plan upon which Prof. Nyce has built a fruithouse at Cleveland, Boston, and other places. Mr H. G. Bulkley showed specimens of apples dried by steam, from fruit nearly a year old, which looked very white and nice. Steam, when above 212 degrees, becomes more of an absorbent, and so increases to be as the heat is increased. Fruit should be dried as soon as rip ?, and before it changes into sugar, that the etarch may be secured. Timber is also dried by this process. The apparatus costs very little. Apples, if placed in one of Prof. Nyce's fmit-house3 will kc»p two years. Neither peaches or strawberries can be kept. The former have longitudinal fibres, and in a manner collapse, while, being without the protection of a skin, they lose by evaporation of the juice and become hard. Paper dipped in parafine makes just as good a cover for fruit jars as rubber, while its cost it so little it cannot be estimated.

In lowa a machine is driven through the Indian corn fields which cuts the corn stalks in pieces 12 to 14 inches iong, making them readily ploughed under. They run a four-horse gang-plough, the ploughman riding all day, turning over four to five acres. Then follows a cornplanter, the driver riding, and with two horses putting in 10 to 12 acres per day, better than it can be done with the hoe. Wheat and oats are also drilled in with a machine, the driver riding on his drilL To cure a kicking cow, nothing is so good as a strong strap three feet long vith a buckle at one end, passed around both hind legs, just above the gambrel joint. It crosses between the legs so as not to slip down, and when drawn up tight brings the legs pretty close together. It requires the cream of from nine to twelve quarts of milk, according to the season and freshness of the cows, to make a pound of butter. When cows have leaky teats, collodion, sometimes called "liquid cuticle," is a remedy. It is not expensive, and is handy to have in the house far burns, abrasions of the skin, and wound 3in delicate plants. Mr H. M. Baldridge, of Illinois, has for several years been experimenting with honey-producing plants, in order to find one or more plants that will pay to cultivate expressly for honey purposes. The Jbest plant, he has discovered is Melilot " Clover (Melitutus Leucantha). It grows rapidly, often attaining the height of from six to eight feet. Farmers generally have not skill enough. The ignorant are competing with the ignorant in raising coarse products. If a farmer will vary his pioductious, as much as the soil and climate will permit, he will be far more prosperous. Let him raise his own wheat and vegetables, fatten his own pork, keep twenty sheep, and not undertake to sell these productions. Then let him study what particular crop he can raise with most profit, and do his very best. A successful grower of strawberries for market, states that he plants rows two feet and a half apart, and a foot apart in the row. Then he lets them run so as to make a bed a foot wide ; he mulches two inches deep in the Fall, and in the Spring he puts the mulching in the rows, or takes off one side.