The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-01-26 00:00:00

itgriculturt.

HARPING OUT FROBT.—You may keep the frost out
of your pits by a free and judicious use of matting.
Thatched hurdles are very convenient for the purpose,
because easily lifted off and on, and creating no litter.
We have many a time put a lighted rushlight into a
small pit on a sharp night, and with a mat or two kept
all safe. In a greenhouse, or a small conservatory with-
out a flue, a large stone bottle painted black and filled at
night with boiling water will be found to radiate
sufficient heat to keep the temperature from sinking to
freezing point.
TURNIPS FOR PlGS.—This CTOp is more generally fed
to cattle and sheep than to swine. For store pigs it
makes a cheap and excellent feed. Our practice is to
boil a large kettleful of them, and while boiling hot to
mix in enough cob meal with them to make a thick
mush. They thrive remarkably well on this article,
and seem to do quite as well as if fed on cob meal alone.
A root diet is much better for growing pigs than pure
corn meal.

WILLOW BASKETS.—There is not a poorer article in
use about a farm than the cheap, shammy made, splint
baskets, chiefly of black ash, which the makers and
vendors of them impose upon us. They charge great
prices for them, and when we get them we use them but
a little while, and throw them aside, worn out or pulled
to pieces. Now, nothing is easier than for any farmer
who has a piece of moist land under fence to grow his
own osier willows, and either make his own baskets, or
have then made in his own neighbourhood. A row of
good osier willows, six or eight rods long, will produce
enough cuttings every year to keep an ordinary farmer
in baskets continually; and one good willow basket is
worth half a dozen of the shammy things made of ash
splints. The willows require no peeling, except for
fancy work ; they are very strong and can be worked
into any shape desirable. Where willow baskets have
once been tried, you will have no wish to throw them by,
and take back the ash ones. If the true osier cannot be
obtained, the common swamp willow answers a good
purpose, as we have tried. But the osier is now so
generally cultivated, particularly in the nurseries, and
so easily obtained, that every farmer might have a little
patch on his premises; and if he cannot make the
cuttings into baskets himself there are usually men
enough in the neighbourhood who will gladly take and
make them up on shares—American Agriculturist.

Use OF GAB LIME.—In all our larger towns where
gas is used for lights, there is a considerable quantity of
waste lime thrown out from the gas houses, lime being
used for passing the gas through to purify it. We have
various reports from farmers who have tried this, some
in favour, some that it has no effect, while others have
condemned it as rank poison to crops. Several inquiries
have recently been addressed to us, one of which from
F. S. Hawley, of Binghampton, N.Y., we forwarded to
Professor S. W. Johnson, of the Yale Analytical and
Agricultural School, requesting an opinion. His reply
will throw some light upon the subject :—" The various
contradictory opinions held among practical farmers
with reference to the value of gas lime as a manure, are
justified by the extreme variableness of its composition.
When perfectly fresh from the gas purifiers, it is in gene-
ral a rather dangerous application to any growing crops,
or in contact with seed. Mr. Solomon Head, of New
Haven, Ct., informs me that he once applied it in the
hill to potatoes, and they never came up. A gentleman
in Wallingford, Ct., applied it to grass land and to the
roots of peach trees. The trees were destroyed and the
grass severely scorched, so that it did not fairly recover
until the ensuing year. It may be used in the fresh
state upon naked fellows, especially when it is desirable
to free the soil from slugs, injurious worms, or couch
grass. What its action is upon vermin may be inferred
from the fact that when fresh it contains a substance
(sulphid of calcium) which is the actual ingredient in the
depilatiors and cosmetics, which are articles employed
for removing hair. There is an account of its being
thrown into a hog-pen with the intent that the swine
should incorporate it with the compost heap. This was
effectually accomplished, but at the expense of the bris-
tles and hair of the hogs, which were, in a great mea-
sure, removed by the operation. It is thought, too, that
the odour of the coal tar, which is mixed with the gas
lime in greater or lesser quantity, serves to dislodge
insects and vermin, and it is sometimes sown in small
quantity over young turnip plants to prevent the attacks
of the turnip fly. In Scotland it is largely applied to
moss land which it is intended to reclaim. The quan-
tity of easily soluble matters (sulphid of calcium, sul-
phite, and hyposulphite of lime) is so variable, ranging
I according to analytical data, from A to 15 parts in 100,
that we may readily comprehend how some gas limes
I may be quite harmless if applied in moderate doses even
I to growing crops, while others, rich in these soluble and
deleterious matters, destroy all vegetation. It has been
supposed that fresh gas lime is reliable on account of
the ammonia it contains. When the gas lime is emptied
from the purifiers in which it has been exposed to the
gas, it has a quite pungent odour of ammonia, but the
quantity, though enough to affect the nostrils, is in
reality too small to have any great manuring value, and
quite disappears after a few days' exposure to the air.
Mr. Twining, of this laboratory, found in a specimen
of perfectly fresh gas lime from the New Haven gas
works but 8-10ths of one per cent of ammonia. In a
gas lime from the gas works of Waterbury, Ct., which
had been exposed to the air for one week, he found but
about 4-100 of one per cent. Fresh gas lime may be
advantageously used if composting swamp, muck, &c.
By fall exposure to the atmosphere, as when scattered
over fallow ground, after a time it becomes innocuous.
The soluble caustic ingredients are converted into no
less valuable a substance than gypsum (plaster),and then,
after its odour and burning taste have disappeared, it
acts precisely like a mixture of lime and gypsum. How
rapidly these changes take place I have no means of
knowing without malting actual trial, but should pre-
come that if a dressing of gas lime be incorporated
thoroughly and uniformly with the soil one week before
sowing or planting, no harm could result to the drop.

In conclusion, your correspondent is recommended to
use more
obt hru the
four et bushels rate
fyooenrha
res CP!
nhb light bushels
get
rhs Def ir
fresh,
s t perh
n ecogh acre :
decheaply
onehPel : heavy
applicationpll
oiotherort
the
n 1 lime,
tt4h
ree
e.
bare
soil and not on the crop. In case of corn or potatoes
it may be scattered between the rows and worked
in at hoeing time. If the gas lime is white,
and tasteless after exposure to air for a time, 3
may be sown like gypsum. It should be remembered
that a wet soil will not be much benefitted by lime, nor
by any manure, unless in • dry season; and that • light
dry soil is soon spoiled by lime unless • good rup'ply of
organic matter be maintained in it, by means of stsble
manure, muck comports, or green manuring. Lime and
plaster, too, are at the best even when they exhibit
their most extraordinary effects, but partial fertilising
agents."
SHADE TREES IN PASTORICS.—III 11111 address before
the late annual fair of the Oneida County Agricultural
Society, the Hon. A. B. Dickinson inveighed severely
against the preservation of shade trees in posture lands.
Such trees, he contended, are • great injury to the soil,
exhausting it for a large area of its fertility and mois-
ture. For this reason, if for no other, they should be
extirpated. But, furthermore, they hinder the fatten-
ing of animals grazing in such fields. In lots fully ex-
posed 16 the sun's rays, the grass is of • better quality;
and there, the cattle, having no shady resorts, stand up
and eat all the time ; whereas, if there were trees here
and there, they would lie down under them in the heat
of the day, and so eat less, and consequently fatten less.
Mr. D. says be has tried the experiment to his entire
satisfaction. Every spring he buys a thousand head of
steers, assigns to each field as many as it ought to sus-
tain well, and never changes their quarters. Re has, in
particular, two fields of thirty acres each, as near alike
in quality of grass, and in all other respects, as possible,
with the exception that one has several shade trees in it,
and the other has none. These fields he has used to test
his theory, and he finds that his cattle fatten sooner in
the open field than in the shaded. He bail found by
actual experiment that the cattle in the open field in-
crease in weight fifteen pounds per head a month over
those in the other pasture. He has arrived at the defi-
nite conclusion, in his own mind, that other things re-
maining the same, "a lot of steers will gain as much in
an open field in four months as they will in five months
in a held where they have access to shade." Mr. D. is a
large and thorough-going farmer, and deserves credit for
, his energy, and for the zeal with which he prosecutes
experiments. But we cannot frilly adopt his opinion in
the present case; at least we must be allowed to express
some objections. Shade trees, he says, exhaust pas-
tures of their fertility. Well, but do they not pay back
large instalments in their annual deposit of leaves? The
grass is of poorer quality around such trees. Granted,
but not so poor that cattle do not eat it. And besides,
the soil and the quality of the grass beneath such trees,
are benefitted by the droppings of the cattle while rest.
ing in the shade. But then, in fields with occasional
trees cattle will lie down in the middle of summer days,
when they ought to be out in the sun industriously fill-
ing themselves with grass, and so taking on fat I We
are not overwhelmed with the foroe of this last consi-
deration. To compel a steer to stand up in dog days, at
noon, and eat grass so as to hasten his fattening, when
he is already full and wants to rest, is ludicrous, if it be
not a barbarous and shortsighted philosophy. But whe-
ther this theory be true or not, many of us still advocate
the preservation of a few shade trees in pastures. Do
rational men live for nothing but to fatten cattle in
short metre? Have considerations of beauty no weight
in their minds? Have they no regard for the comfort
of their domestic animals? A merciful man is merciful
to his beasts. There is, perhaps, no rural scene more
pleasing than that of flocks and herds resting at summer
noon under the shade of trees, or cooling their hot
limbs in some running stream. We take off our hat
and grasp the hand of Mr. D.'s foreman, who, on being
ordered by the proprietor to demolish every tree in •
certain pasture, came back at night, saying "I cut
down all but two; they were so handsome I could'nt do
it; I could'nt touch 'ens. If you want them felled you
must do it yourself, for I won't." Good Sir I The
panting steers will thank you, and so will we.—eleicri.
can Agriculturist.