The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-05-17 00:00:00

THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK.

The Daily Telegraph of Monday had an article
under the above heading, from which we make the
following extract:
A large number of farmers will to-day turn out
cattle from their winter quarters to grass, it being
held to be a common observance, almost as fixed and
unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians,
that this must always be done on or about Old May
Day. Arthur Young at the commencement of the
century, wrote.: "About the 12th of this month
(May) the farmer may calculate that he will have a
sufficient bite of grasses to leave off foddering entirely,
and before that he should not think of it; for if cattle
are turned into grass not sufficiently advanced in
growth they would require such a number of acres that
his mowing ground would be greatly curtailed." It
might reasonably be thought that the right time
to turn stock to their pastures is when the grass has
grown to a sufficient maturity to receive them,
whether it be April or May; besides which, experience
and good judgment combine to show the utility of a
mixed system of feeding, not only for both these
months, but very generally throughout the year.
Thus, there should be a provision of either mangold
wurzel, rye, or kale, for cattle partly to subsist on up
to the very end of May, when vetches, or trifolium
incarnatum might afford sufficient cuttings for them
to live, not wholly on green crops, but to some
moderate extent on them, throughout summer.
These they should devour in their stalls, which
they ought to inhabit up to the end of May
at night, and afterwards throughout summer for
three or four hours in the middle of the day. The
advantage of this improved system, when explained,
will be manifest to every one. Pastures are extremely
variable in their produce, not only in spring, but
throughout summer and autumn, and if there are
arable crops to fall back upon, greater uniformity
in the supply of dietary can be preserved. Grass
being short, the beasts would have a larger pro-
portion of forage from the arable lands, or
roots from the mangel heap, while, if plentiful,
a much less quantity would suffice. Next, cattle
suffer fewer privations by this alternate system
of housing and turning out. They must be
much more comfortable in stalls and yards during
such nights of April and May as are commonly
experienced; and when the sun waxed hot in summer
they are sure to seek the shade of the nearest tree.
They are also tolerably sure to be pestered by flies,
and have their blood raised to a state of fever if
allowed to remain in the,open air. And there is still
another reason for this improved system of feeding
cattle founded on the indisputable principle that a
varied dietary is always far more salutary than when
it consists of only one single kind. This alternation
of soiling and pasturing has been found to be of
special utility to dairy cows. They observe a more
equable contentment, without which, a steadily sus-
tained full supply of milk can seldom be depended
upon; and .when they have dailyi" a little artificial
food such as cotton cake, bean meal, or maize meal,
they can be made far more remunerative than
under any other management. The .alternation of
foddering and pasturing might be pursued without any
artificial feeding, but the most experienced dairy
farmers have forma conclusions by direct experi-
ment, that the deepest milkers among dairy cows
absolutely require it torbe sustained in the full vigour
of yielding capacity. Grass fields at the present
period are far better furnished than they were a year
since, when cattle were turned into them, however
great the complaints have been of late that the bitter
April winds turned pastures rusty 2nd stopped their
growth. Last we ek afforded almost every kind of weather
to be found in the calendar,including thunder,lightning,
snow, and hail; but there was a ccviccas rainfall,
with sufficient heat to cause the grass to
start afresh, and, now that we have warm
nights as well as days, active growth may be ex-
pected to proceed with great rapidity. .The situation
is altogether a better one compared with that of
1883: The early part of May was then so cold, and
vegetation so backward, that in the bill districts of
the North of England and Scotland, thousands of
lambs died for lack of sustenance, and the change to
genial warmth has come a week earlier this year as it
did not take place then until May 15. Those who
were lamenting the unusual backwardness of the
season last week and the probability of a late harvest
should remember this. If only the gratifying change
experienced since Friday should continue, the full
plant of corn in the ground will so rapidly develope
itself, that with sufficient summer heat we might
reasoaablv auticiDate an early harvest

THE SOURCES OF THE JORDAN.
On the confines of the Holy Land, below the lower
spurs of Mount Hermon and the Anti-Lebanon, two
villages, only a little more than four miles apart,
standing on the crests of two small hills, and each,
peopled only by a few hundred inhabitants, have,
since the earliest days of Palestine exploration
attracted the attention of travellers. Situated in the
midst of the grandest scenery to be found in Pales-
tine, these insignificant hamlets have claims upon the
interest of the civilised world on other and wider
grounds. Here we must seek for the two main sources
of the Jordan, the most sacred stream on the face
of the earth, unique alike in its history and its
geography, whilst its valley presents geological
problems that have yet to be solved. In Tel-el-
Kaily :and Banias are satisfied in a remarkable
degree all the conditions required to identify them
respectively with the Dan of the Old Testament and
the Ciesarea Philippi of the New, and there is no,
doubt remaining as to their coincidence with those
ancient cities. Situated in the midst of the. Huleh
plain, about a mile south of the slopes of Hermon, is
Tell-el-Kady, a rounded mound, six hundred and
fifty-seven feet above the level of the sea, broad and
low on the northern side, and rather steeper on the
south. On the western side of the mound is an
impenetrable thicket of oaks, oleanders, and reeds,
and beneath them bursts forth the River Jordan,.
"full-grown at birth, a wonderful fountain, like a
bubbling basin, the largest spring in Syria, and said to
be the largest single spring in the world, where the drain-
age of the southern side of Hermon seems to have
found a collective exit." The basin is nearly a hun-
dred yards wide, and the water is singularly limpid.
Another spring, rising in the centre of the
mound, escapes over the south-western ridge,
where, when Dr. Robinson saw it in 1852,
it drove two mills, and possessed power to
drive any number. It then joins the first and larger
stream. The river, now known as the Nahr Leddan,
descends rapidly through a luxuriant grove of
oleanders, briars, wild figs, poplars, pistacia, and mul-
berry trees, to the }Jain below, and, rushing on,
passes Khurbet Daniah, another mound, and running
side by side with the Nahr Hasbany, a smaller stream
which drains the western slope of Hermon, it is, four
miles to the southward, joined by the Nahr Banias,
and becomes the Jordan, which receives the Hasbany
as an affluent stream half a mile further south, and
then flows into the dense jungle of papyrus of the
Huleh marshes. There is no question that the city
of Dan, the ancient Lesem or Laish, was a Phcenician
colony, an offshoot of Sidon, and the story of the
surprise and conquest of its careless inhabitants by the
warlike Danites, who came up this rich plain from
their tribal territory in the south-west of Palestine, is
told in the Books of Joshua and Judges. It was here
that the Danites built their city, and called it Dan,
"after the name of Dan their father." From Tell-el-
Kady to Banias, which lies due east, the road passes
through beautiful park-like scenery, thickly studded
with trees, principally oak, not very large, but very
vefreshing after the bare plain to the west of the Tell:
The village of Banias, which is now inhabited by about
350 Moslems, lies in the corner of a recess in the
plain, and, except on the west, is surrounded on all
sides by hills. The vegetation is most luxuriant, and
the stone-built houses are almost completely secluded
by trees of all sorts. Behind them, to the north-east,
on the summit of a narrow rocky ridge, with deep
valleys on the northern and southern sides, rises the
crusading castle of Subeibeh, one of the. finest and
best preserved of the ruined castles of Galilee. From
a cave at the foot of the cliff an immense spring gushes
out, and, bursting in a multitude of strearnlets, through
masses of rock and debris: which are conjectured to
be the records of an earthquake, it forms a strong
stream below them. This, the Nahr Banias, is thern
other source of the Jordan, and in ancient times it
was by far the larger spring, but now the quantity of
water in both the Nahr Banias and the Nahr Leddan
is about the same. In the face of the rock, immedi-
ately above the stream, brul upOred accessible by the
pile of debris, OW 844 three niches, and here too is a
large grotto. The tablets on the niches bear Greek
inscriptions, which have been partially deciphered,
and leave no doubt that here we have the remnants of
A foafan shrine, of no vast antiquity, but of surpassing
interest in its bearing upon history. Here the Greeks
of the Macedonian kingdom of Antioch probably
raised a temple to Pan, calling the colony Paneas, an
appellation which has come down to us in the modern
form Banias.—Quiver.