Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1868-12-02
A0fifnltnta1.

IHE CndheIS USE odi' DIS Top uFes-
sing for roses.
The MIX FEvER.-The North Brit
ISL Aqricu7tnrist says that milk fever
abounds wherever COWS, as in Ayrshire,
are bountiful mixers Putting the ami
mails on short conmon for fortnight or
three week before calving, viii greatly les
son the number of cases. The reduction
must be made both in The quantity and
quality of the food. A dose of physie
re peated weekly for three weeks before
ealving is also useful precaution.
WHEAT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN Sue
cEssIoN.-ID late number of the Irish
Farmers Gazette an inquiry was address
ed to J. B Lewes, asking whether it was
true, as reported, that he had grown wheat
twenty-five years consecutively on the
same land without the aid of any fertilizer,
and, if so, the character of the yield at
the last cropping. The response was an
affirmative one, to the effect that he CON-
menced cropping, as an experiment, in
1874, following wheat with wheat without
applying any manure. AS soon as the
harvest was over, the field was plowed to
the ordinary depth of four or FIVE inches,
and left undisturbed till the last week in
October or the first one in November, when
the ground was narrowed and two bushels
of seed to the acre drilled in. Care was
taken not TO turn up the subsoil, leaving
the ground to its natural yield from year
TO year without manurial aid The crop
in 1874 was fifteen bushels to the acre,
and the twenty-fifth one, sixteen bushels
Care was always taken to keep grass and
weeds down il the wheat feld-hoeing
twice and even three times when necessa.
ry-RmaE Neeo Yorher.
WALKING HORSES. Farmers
Home Journal makes the following Judi
cious suggestions:
1.-THE best gait horse ever had for ev-
cry day use is good walk. It is gait
that not one in ten possesses. Colts are
not trained to walk in all Of the Eastern
States Young America wants more speed.
Kentucky has more good walking horses
than any other states, for there horseback
travelling has long been in fashion for men
and women, over country where muddy
roads at times rendered any other gait i'm
possible, and so horses have been bred for
the saddle, and trained to a walking gai..
This is also the case in all the Western
States, and perhaps might have been so in
New England, when our grandmothers
rode to meeting on pillion behind our
grandfathers. But one-horse wagons have
put horseback riding out of fashion, and
now good walking horse is more rare
than one that can trot mile in 2:40.
At the Springfield Mass, horse show
Of 1868, the writer was one of the com
mittee to award prizes to the best walking
horses. Out of seventeen entered, the
committee found but one that was consid-
cred a frstrate walker. This was Nor
Fill mare, which walked FIVE miles an
hour with ease. Two others were fair
walkers, and the rest knew no gait that
could be called walking. At the New
York State Fair the same state Of things
was again developed. A letter from Wis
consin says: I think horses trained to
walk fast would be greater benefit to our
farmers in general than fast trotters, as
almost all of the work has to be done with
walk ! once knew a man in Massa-
chusetts who, before the railroads were
built, Kept from two to four teams at work
on the road, and never allowed them to
tr0t at all, and made the distance in
quicker time than his nelghbors, who
made their horses trot at every convent
emf place: He said that when a horse
commenced to walk after trot he walked
much slower than his common gait, if
Kept on walk, and thereby lost more
than he gained. Will farmers think of
this, and pay more attentention to walk
ing horses :"
CAM WE GROW WHEAT. THAT it is
possible to raise wheat, and still not destroy
the ability OF the soil to produce it for the
next generation; that it is practicable to
go on improving it in fertility, while we
blennially take from it a crop Of this most
desired cereal, no one who has read the
progress of improved agriculture in Eng
land, viii think to doubt. The truth is,
We have settled down into the idea that it
is best to crop our land with wheat till it
fails to return the seed we SOW, and then
10 follow the setting sun to the land of the
Indian and buffalo. By tilling the soil,
We mean killing the soil, and when the
wreck is accomplished, we heartlessly seek
out another spot which shall share the
fate Of our last victim. There really ap-
pears to be nc way CT preserving for pos
terity the fertility ofour few tillable plains
on the frontier, but to leave them to the
wandering bands of the Sioux and Canaan
ches.
Is agriculture as applicable to wheat
raising, lost art, or is it that our Ameri
can farmers have not yet found it out
We believe the latter. We are inclined
think if no virgin plains had lain west CT
the Alleganies, that wheat would still be
raised between them and the sea. Good
farming comes ofnecessity. agriculture,
ike any other art, must be studied, written
about, and talked over. We bring all the
appliances Of science to our aid, and put
ourselves in the way to profit by the ex-
perienee of those who have achieved a sue
cess in the branch we have been attending
to.
Now few of these things have been dene
IN this country in respect of wheat. We
have had conventions of sorghum growers,
fruit growers, wool growers, grape growers,
and Of poultry faneiers, but when have we
had a convention of wheat growers on