Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-11-15
Farm and ORCHARD.
THE HORSE CHINESE METHODS IN
AGRICULTURE.
Important Tests in Churning- To Destroy
stumps-Fertilizers and Wheat
Farming Notes.

Veterinary surgeon harnesson Aas au-
dressed words of wisdom to French farm
ers in telling them how to treat their
horses, especially when work is brisk. He
begs the fact not to be lost sight of that
the horse, however large in size, has after
all only relatively small stomach-per-
baps too small for an herbivorous animal.
It's capacity is about sixteen quarts.
Distended beyond this volume it is liable
to rupture, because its formation is such
that retching is impossible. With this
small stomach is connected forty-fve yards
of intestine; the mucous membrane
which coats the latter would carpet
the animal twice over from head to feet
In other words, the mucous surface is
equal to double the surface of the horses
hide.
In the middle of this enormous tube,
1876 feet long, are two immense reservoirs,
the cocum and the colon, in which the
ailments accumulate. These reservoirs &C.
cupy themselves above three-fourths Of
the abdominal cavity, in which they freely
float, but exposed to intertwist, ending in
a mortal volvulus. Such is the digestive
apparatus. Let us give glance how it
works. A draft horse consumes at its
feed half bundle of hay, five quarts OF
oats and eight quarts of water. All that
can not remain simultaneously In the
stomach. The hay and oats remain to be
acted upon by the gastric juice, the water
passes rapidly out Of the stomach to ar
rive in the coecum and the colon, after a
circuit of twenty-seven yards.
If the stomach be too full from an ex-
cess of solids the water is damned; this
stop can distend the stomach and produce,
if not a lesion, indigestive disorders,
above all if the animal be very thirsty and
drinks with avidity. Accidents may occur
if the horse, on entering the stables after
work with an empty stomach, be allowed
to drink. Apart from the effects of cold
water on the heated system, the water that
would naturally go to the intestine re-
mains largely in the stomach, paralyzing
its membrane and causing indigestion.
Hence, never give horse more food than
the stomach can contain, nor wait to give
drink till all the solids have been eaten
do not allow the animal to drink if very
warm nor too much if very dry. If the
horse be watered, as is too commonly the
practice, after finishing the feed of oats,
much of the latter will be washed, parti-
ally digested or not at all, into the intes-
tine, where it may act as foreign body
and give rise to. irritation or passed unutil-
lied into the excrements.
Let horses, then, drink before their oats,
not Immediately after. The same remark
applies to bran when given in the manger.
Carrots are excellent digestive food, but
the base of horses diet is hay. NJ. War
nesson places lump of rock salt in the
rack or manger with excellent effect
When the horse has only the contents of
the nose-back to fall back upon, allow the
animal ten minutes to regain its breath
give drink and attach the bag.
The Paris Omnibus Company views the
new steel metallic horse-collar with favor.
1t fits the neck well, and seizes greater
surface it il solid, while being elastic; is
made in best steel; is easily fastened and
unfastened and produces no sores.-Cd-
madam Agriculturist.
CHINESE METHODS IN AGRICULTURE.
We are to-day confronted in America
with serious shrinkage in farm values,
and at the East especially with the aband
onmeut of these lands, since they produce
no longer satisfactory material results. 1t
is Just here that the despised Chinaman
offers a valuable lesson with a suggestion
which we would do well to heed. We
seem to have been induced to prodigality
almost from the very start by the compar-
alive richness of our American soil
Where the earth had to be scratched in pre-
paration for crop, and artificial stimu-
lants were altogether unknown, we forgot
in part our common heritage of hard and
persistent labor, and fondly imagined that
the land would never, or only at some re-
mote period "run out" in productiveness.
As result the natural exhaustion of the
soil resultant from constant employment
drives us to sheer despair, and the older
farms are deserted for others which in turn
must share an identical fate. We do little
for the lands Improvement. Its exhaus-
ton is the fact forced upon us, and we fee
rather than face the problem. But the
Chinaman does nothing of the sort. In
his native country he would be deprived
Of his farm or his garden if he refused to
it, and instead of abandoning his
possessions, which would prove, indeed,
suicidal there, with the crowded conditions
of population. he sets himself to the work
of making the most of what he has.
Everything OF possible use in fertilization !
is scrupulously saved, every rice stalk is
planted as seed and repianted by hand in
water; rain water is held universally in
ponds or in holes for purposes of irrigation,
and in these reservoirs fish are invariably
grown.
Where human labor is vastly cheap and
cattle and beasts of burden are considered
costly carriers and producers, it is natural
that human labor should be employed for
almost everything. 1t is said that there is
no plant weeds visible in the
most thicklY populated parts of the en-
pire, since there is no room for them, and
since they are destroyed in a country
which examines even the roots of plants
10 remove or kill insects or grubs All
sorts Of methods to induce the rich growth
Of seeds are employed, and fertilizers are
applied to the roots of plants directly
rather than at the surface of the ground,
where evaporation and diffusion would re-
suit IN waste. This seems peculiar TO
farmers in America, where the total loss
from sheer wastefulness in the course of a
year is something upon which Celestial
would look with woe; but it is only the
extreme practice of economy which the
American agriculturist needs to learn. In
deed, this same principle of economy has
become distinctive feature of our higher
yrade farms and the most advanced farmer
will be found rendering available material
and space which the old-style producer
would let go to waste. 1t is an unpleasant
spectacle which the Chinese agriculturist
presents in his means and methods with
out question, but is scarcely less pleasant
than that of some short-sighted American
farmers, whose improvident habits and
heritage carry them to the other extreme.
Journal
TESTS IN CHURNING.
The scarcity of ice the past summer
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