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SOUTHERN PLANTER, 



DEVOTED TO 



RlCULTuRE, HORTICULTURE, 








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PJUr ' N 7 D, VA. 
MACFARLA^'L k FERGJJSSON, Frinvers. 

1861. 



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THE 



ODTHESN PLANT 




DEVOTED TO 



Agriculture, Horticulture, and the Household Arts. 



Agriculture is the nursing mother of the Arts. — Xenophon. 
Tillage and Pasturage are the two breasts of the State. — Sully. 



J. E. WILLIAMS, iff. D., ? FnlTORS / AUGUST & WILLIAMS, 

Prof. WILLIAM GILHAM. $ ^ DIT0RS - I. Proprietors. 



Vol. XXI. RICHMOND, VA., JANUARY, 1861. No. 1. 



I 



From the Christian Intelligencer. 

"Peruvian Guano, and Phosphates." 
1 With no sort of propriety can it be said, that Peruvian guano is a stimulant 
o vegetation, in the common sense of the word — 1st, because it has almost no 
- Stimulating property whatever ; and 2nd, because if it had, vegetation itself is 
jot, and cannot be the subject of stimulation. We very properly call alcohol a 
•imulant, simply and only for the reason, that when it is brought in contact 
pith the sensation nerves, and blood-vessels, of an animal, it produces in them 
a peculiar irritation or excitement, called stimulation; but as guano is almost 
devoid of any stimulating principle of any kind, and as plants have neither 
nerves, bIood-ve33cls, nor sensation, nor any thing else precisely analogous 
thereto of course it would be simply absurd to liken the action of the one, on 
the vegetable organism, to that of the other on the animal economy. 

Equally true and demonstrable is it, that guano does not stimulate plants in 
any manner or sense whatever. No doubt there are many very credulous 
farmers, who, making it a point to believe every thing they read in the advertise- 
ments of interested manure manufacturers, very dogmatically assert the contrary 
of this and talk very flippantly on the subject, who have no definite views of any 
kind, a3 to the action of guano. There are others, however, who make a sort of 
figurative application of the word stimulant, and with some show of plausibility 
contend, that as guano (because of its relatively large per centage of ammonia) 
uniformly and invariably causes a rapid and excessive growth of the stalks and 
leaves, and corresponding extention of the roots of plants, its constant and 
inevitable tendency, is to drain the soil of the mineral constituents of plants, 
and that a frequent application of this fertilizer, to the same land, will sooneF or 
later — surely — effect a complete and hopeless exhaustion of the soil, by depriving 
1 



334031 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



Dr. Jacob Townsend," was the inventor of the matchless and inimitable " Tovyn- 
send Sarsaparilla ! " But as he is clearly of the opinion they are all good, he 
concludes it best to try them all, by throwing all the different kinds into pi, and 
making a sort eft pell-mell application, like a physician I've heard of, who in an 
obscure case, gave his patients a dozen different kinds of medicine at once, in 
order, as he said, that Nature might choose between them which she'd prefer. 
Being anxious, however, to test the merits of each fertilizer, he of course 
reserves small portions of each for separate experiments, but being much sur- 
prised and taken aback to find little or no difference in the crop, is puzzled to 
solve the mystery much in the same way of the school-boy, who, in working a 
sum in substraction, insisted it must be a mistake in the arithmetic to say 
" Naught from naught and nothing remains" for somehow or another, " Naxujht 
certainly does remain." 

But one very desirable quality claimed for phosphates is, that while they do 
not very sensibly promote the growth of the straw, they do invariably produce a 
marvellously fine effect on the grain, both as to the quality and yield, that the 
heads of wheat have more grain in the mesh, and are besides longer, fuller and 
plumper than those grown from Peruvian guano, and other forcing manures. 
Possibly this may be so, and that in process of time some hopeful and public 
spirited farmer, who has faith in them, will greatly improve our breeds of wheat 
by lengthening the head and shortening the stalk, (much in the same way that 
the short horn breeder, by careful breeding, improves the form of his cattle,) so 
that the tall, rangy, shanghai stalks of the Poland variety shall at last come to 
be decidedly dwarfish and duck-legged in their proportions. But while the 
theory is that phosphates produce an astonishingly fine effect on the grain, the 
general experience is, that when used alone, they produce little or no effect of any 
kind. 

But since the necessity of applying phosphates to all worn and exhausted 
soils, is generally admitted and urged by chemists, it has been deemed adviiablc 
to mix Peruvian and Phosphatic guanos together, half and half, by a peculiar 
mixing and grinding process, called manipulation, by which is produced a ferti- 
lizer, finely powdered, convenient to handle, and several dollars in the ton 
cheaper than the Peruvian, and no doubt it is a good thing. But after all it is 
questionable whether the mass is a great deal enriched by the addition of the 
Phosphates. Indeed the idea of improving Peruvian guano by any such means, 
reminds me of an anecdote I have heard told of an old toper, who one day 
being quite thirsty, as well as quite out of money, went to a neighbor who had 
some good cider, and told him if he would give him a pitcher of cider, he would 
advise him how to fatten his hogs very cheaply. The cider was brought and 
drunk, and the recipe demanded. " Take," said he, " one bushel of saw-dust 
and one bushel of meal; mix the same well in a barrel, and then add water 
sufficient to cover the whole ; let it stand till cool, and then feed of the mixture 
to your hogs, plentifully, three times a day, and they will fatten astonishingly 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 5 

fast." The neighbor was delighted; but just when the old toper had drained 
the pitcher, and was about leaving, he dryly remarked : " I forgot to tell you, 
neighbor, that instead of a bushel of saw-dust, it would be better to use only 
half a bushel, and upon the whole, I dare say it icould be better still not to use 
any at all." 

And yet every farmer should be willing and anxious to give these manipula- 
tions an extended trial. It is only by a series of the most careful experiments 
that he can determine their value, and he should regard it his bounden duty to 
try them fully and fairly. In the mean while, I would advise him to preserve 
his equilibrium, and not suffer himself to be carried away by " every wind of 
doctrine." " 'Tis a base abandonment of reason to resign his right of thought," 
and he ought to think and act calmly, dispassionately, and impartially, not taking 
anything for granted, but questioning everything; and while it is right to respect 
chemistry and to honor the chemist, who has done, and is yet doing very much 
to elevate and advance the noble art of agriculture, he should recollect that the 
chemical and physiological laws which regulate and control vegetable assimila- 
tion and nutrition are as yet but little understood by the chemist, and that in 
truth it may well be said of him, as Hamlet pithily remarked to his friend, 
Horatio : " there are more things in Heaven and earth than he ever dreamed of 
in his philosophy." P. B. Pendleton. 

Louisa County, October 25th, 1860. 



From the British Farmer's Magazine. 

The Forces used in Agriculture. 
A paper by Mr. J. C. Morton, read at the Society of Arts, Wednesday, De- 
cember 1, 1859. J. Bennett Lawes, Esq., in the Chair. 

The three forces to which I shall refer are steam-power, horse-power, and 
manual labour. Each of them has employment in our present English agricul- 
ture, and one object of this paper is to point out the extensive fields open, espe- 
cially to the first and last of them, in the agriculture of the future. For there 
are three classes under which all the operations of the farm may be arranged, 
and they correspond exactly to these three forces which we have at our command. 

In the first, where the greatest uniformity of process obtains, the greatest 
power is needed, and a purely mechanical force, acting through levers, wheels 
and pulleys, is in this way sufficiently under our control for their performance, 
and this class of operations increases in extent and in importance with almost 
every permanent improvement of the land, i. e., with everything which tends to 
the uniformity of its condition. In the second class as much force is needed; 
but rocky subsoil, awkward hedge-rows, crooked roads, and scattered produce, 
interfere with any possibility of uniform procedure. Some machinery, more 
pliable than cranks and rods, is needed by which to carry out the purpose of the 
mind ; and here, therefore, it must work by means of the teachable and powerful 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



horse. This class of operations diminishes in extent and importance with every 
permanent improvement of the soil, i. e., with every removal of those obstacles' 
to which I have referred. In the third class, the care and cultivation of indi- 
vidual life, vegetable and animal, are concerned ; no great power is needed, but 
there is need for the constant and immediate exercise of the will, varying, it may 
be, at every successive moment; and here, therefore, the human mind can work 
only by its most perfect instrument — the human hand. It is plain that every- 
thing by which, on the one hand, land is brought to a uniform condition, and by 
which, on the other, the quantity of its living produce is increased, will extend 
the first and last of these three fields of agricultural operations, and will dimin- 
ish the necessity of employing horses. 

And this is no mere speculation : it is the principal lesson of the agricultural 
experience of the past few years. If we knew for several successive years ex- 
actly the employment of our agricultural labourers, its nature, its quantity, and 
its reward on each of the farms which make up the surface of ©reat Britain ; 
and if we also knew the quantity and the manner during all these years of the 
horse-labour of all these farms, its cost per acre and its effect ; and if, in addi- 
tion to all this information, we had the full experience, now very considerable, 
of the use of steam-power upon the farm, not only for threshing and grinding 
and cutting, but for cultivating the soil, we should certainly learn from it how 
rapid has been the extension of those circumstances under which steam cultiva- 
tion becomes possible, and how perfectly along with it the demand for agricul- 
tural labour has been maintained. Such a review of agricultural experience, 
would, however, teach us more than this, for by a comparison of the experience 
of different farms wc should learn the most economical mode of obtaining these 
powers, and the best way of applying each within the field thus open to it. "We 
should learn how to ensure the most economical and efficient condition of our 
steam engine and its machinery ; we should learn how to obtain the most econom- 
ical and efficient horse labour; and by so large an experience those circumstances 
would be pointed out under which the best farm servants are to be procured and 
retained. 

The forces used in agriculture, thus considered, form, therefore, a very 
extensive subject, and it is only two or three illustrative remarks under each of 
these several aspects of it that can be made within the hour. 

In the first place, then, let me attempt a more particular comparison of steam 
power, horse power, and hand power for the cheap performance of mere labour. 
In describing steam engines, the term " horse power" is used as a unit of force. 
The power exerted by a horse is assumed, on the authority of experiment, equal 
to the pull or lift of 33,000 lbs., 1 foot per minute; and to this agricultural ex- 
perience agrees, for if a pair of horses draw a plough along with an average 
pull of 300 lbs., at an average rate of 2i miles per hour, i. e., of 220 feet per 
minute, it is the same as if those 300 lbs. were pulled over a pulley, i. e., lifted 
that height in that time, and 300 lbs. lifted 220 feet per minute is just the same 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



as 66,000 lbs. lifted 1 foot high per minute, which, as the performance of a pair 
of horses, is exactly the 33,000 lbs. apiece, at which their force is valued by the 
engineer. Now, it is not on a comparison merely of the cost of horse power in 
the animal and in the engine that so great superiority of the latter will appear 
as really belongs to it. In addition to this, the performance of which they are 
severally capable must be taken into account. An ordinary 10-horse power loco- 
motive agricultural engine will, according to the Chester judges of the work 
done by Fowle's steam plough there, cost in coals, oil and water, and attendance, 
and tear and wear of implement and engine, but excluding interest on capital 
employed, nearly 45s. a day, or about 4s. 6d. an hour, which is 5£d- per hour 
for each nominal horse power exerted, but as the real force exerted is more often 
that of 20 horses in the case of a 10-horse power engine, we must really divide 
this by 2, and call steam-produced horse power worth 3d. per hour. Now, the 
cost of horse labour on 21 farms, in different parts of this country, of which the 
particulars have been kindly given to me, did not exceed 5d. per horse for each 
of the working hours of the year. Those farms employ 282 horses, and they 
cost for food, for depreciation of value and saddler's and blacksmith's bills, 
£7,815 a year; their implements need £870 a year to keep them good; and the 
ploughmen and boys employed about them cost £4,211 a year in wages — about 
£13,000 in all, or £46 per horse per annum; and supposing that there are 2,500 
working hours in the year, this is rather less than 5d. per horse per hour. 

Besides this, the estimated expense of Fowler's engine was, I believe, exces- 
sive, and the nominal power of it was certainly below the actual force at which 
it could be worked with the estimated quantity of coal consumed ; for of 30 
engines tried at Chester only one consumed the 11 lbs. of coal per hour for every 
horse power produced, which is the consumption named for Fowler's engine, and 
the majority did not consume more than 6 to 8 lbs. during that time. 

A horse at plough with an average length of 120 yards of furrow loses one- 
third of his time on the headland in the mere act of turning the plough. At 
the dung-cart not one-third of his time is employed in the actual conveyance of 
the load, two-thirds are lost standing at the heap and in the field and returning with 
the empty cart. Or rather, let me say this loss of time is a necessary part of 
his employment, however he may be engaged. He can pull .33,000 lbs. 1 foot 
high in a minute, but he cannot keep that performance up for 10 hours at a time. 

On six farms the details of which I have so ascertained as that all the plough- 
ing, scarifying, harrowing, rolling, horse-hoeing, carting — all the horse labour in 
fact on each — is converted into lbs. lifted -so many feet per minute throughout 
the working year, I find that the actual performance per hour through the year 
is not 33,000 lbs. lifted 1 foot per minute, but more nearly one-half that quan- 
tity, varying from 14,000 lbs. in the lowest case, to 19,000 lbs. in the highest. 

No doubt, even in the case of steam power, there must be periods of waste 
labour — ploughs must be turned upon the headland even if it be done by steam ; 
but these occasional periods of comparatively fruitless work are no necessary con- 



8 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

dition of steam power ; it is better if maintained continuously, and machinery 
■will be invented to reduce this waste time to a minimum with a positive advan- 
tage to the efficiency of the engine. Whereas in horse labour, the waste time 
is necessary for the maintenance of the power itself. And it is plain that, along 
with the 5d. per hour for every horse, which on the average it may cost, there 
has to be taken into account a performance on the average of the year of only 
19,000 lbs. lifted by it 1 foot high per minute as its best result; whereas in the 
case of the steam engine its 3d. per horse per hour has to be taken along with 
nearly twice as large a performance as its best result. 

And the relative cost of the two forces is affected not only by the question of 
time during which each can be continuously maintained, but also by the quality 
of the performance of which each is capable. In thrashing, uniformity of speed 
is a condition of good work ; it is more easily maintained by steam power than 
by horses. In ploughing, the avoidance of trampling and of pressure generally 
is almost a condition of good work; it is more easily obtained by steam-drawn 
machinery for the purpose. But to this I shall recur. 

Let us now estimate the cost of manual labour engaged in what I call mere 
work, i. e., where the least degree of skill is called for. I have four facts in 
illustration of this point : 

1st. A man will dig 8 perches of land, or say 2,000 square feet, nearly a foot 
deep, in a day. In doing so he lifts probably three-quarters of it through at 
least a foot in height; that is to say, he lifts 1,500 cubic feet, weighing at least 
150,000 lbs., 1 foot high in ten hours' time, and to do it therefore he must main- 
tain upon the average a lift of 250 lbs. per minute all that time. Of course, in 
addition to the mere lift, there is the labour of cutting off this earth from the 
firm ground to which it was attached. In my second case, then, this poition of 
his labour is very much reduced. 2nd. Three men will lift — I have often paid 
them for doing it — 100 cubic yards of farmyard dung, and fill into carts in 10 
hours' time. The 33 cubic yards which fall to each man's share, or about 14 
cwt. apiece, weigh 50,000 lbs., and this is lifted over the hedge of the cart, or 4 
feet high — equal to 200,000 lbs. lifted daily 1 foot high, or 330 lbs. per minute. 
This is one-fourth more than in the last case. Now take one where there is no 
labour in detaching the weight from any previous connection. 3rd. A man will 
pitch in an hour's time — I have often seen him do it — an acre of a good crop, 
tied in sheaves, to an average height of full 6 feet, on the cart or wagon. Straw 
and corn together, such a crop will weigh more than 2 tons, say 5.000 lbs. In 
doing this he therefore lifts 300,000 lbs. 1 foot high in 10 hours' time, or 500 
lbs. per minute. 4th. My fourth case is much the same kind. One man and 
five boys, or women, equal as regards wages — and I will therefore assume equal 
as regards power to three men — will throw into carts upon an average, of swedes 
and mangel wurzels, 3 acres of a good crop, say 70 tons in all, in a day of 9 
hours' length. They lift, then, 150,000 lbs. 4 feet, being, say 600,000 lbs. 1 foot; 
being 200,000 lbs. apiece in 9 hours' time, or about 370 lbs. a minute. 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 9 

These four cases indicate the mere force of a man, then, at a cost of, say 3d. 
an hour, as equal to a lift of 250, 330, 500, and 370 lbs. per minute; the two 
former beins cases where the load has to be detached as well as lifted, and the 
third being performed under the influence of good harvest fare. 

But now compare this, even in the best case, with the duty of a steam engine, 
or 33.000 lbs. 1 foot high per minute for 3d. an hour, and compare it with the actual 
average performance of the horse, 16,000 lbs. lifted 1 foot per minute for 5d. an 
hour. In order, at the best rate named, to do the work of the steam engine, 66 men 
would be required, at a cost, not of %!., but of more than 15s. per hour; and 
in order to do the work of the horse 32 men would be needed, at a cost of 8s., 
instead of 5d., an hour. It is plain that if we can take much of the mere labour 
of the farm out of the hands of the labourer, and put it into the hands of steam 
power for its performance, there is an enormous amount of saving to be made in 
the cost of agricultural production. It is plain that it is mere folly in the 
labourer to think that, as regards the mere labour of the land, he can compete 
with either steam power or horse power. Strength of body is desirable, and 
sinew hardened by long practice in hard labour has a considerable marketable 
value ; for that, however hardly it may sound, is the aspect of the matter in 
which the interests of the labourer most directly appear ; but it is plain that for 
sheer lift and the mere putting forth of force, horse power, and still more that 
of untiring steam, must grind the soul of anybody that shall pretend to compe- 
tition with them. It is in the cultivation, not so much of mere strength of body 
as of skill and intelligence, that the safety of the labourer lies, and in his capa- 
bility of education he is perfectly secure. 

As the matter at present stands, then, and confining ourselves to that large 
and increasing class of operations in which the power required is great and the 
process almost uniform, and looking only to the cost per unit of work done, we 
have seen that steam power stands decidedly first in the race ; horse power is a 
tolerably good second, and the agricultural labourer is literally nowhere. There are, 
however, two considerations which greatly affect the position of horse power in this 
competition, and place it much further back than it would at present seem to be. 
They both affect its fitness for those acts of cultivation where it is plain that 
there is the greatest room for an extended use of steam power. I refer, first, to 
the injury done to the land by the trampling of draught animals; and secondly 
to that irregularity of employment on the farm for horses during the year, which 
in effect makes you keep upon a large farm several horses all the year round for 
the sake of their work during a few weeks of spring and autumn. If a steam 
engine, which costs nothing when it is idle, can be used to take this extra work, 
and so reduce the horse labour of the farm to an uniformly monthly amount, 
then its cost has to be compared, not with that of the horses which it has dis- 
placed only during the few weeks in question, but with the cost of those horses 
throughout the year. It is this fitness of the engine for the cultivation of our 
stubbles in autumn, and so its power to displace so many teams throughout the 



10 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



year which would otherwise be kept just for the few weeks of most laborious 
time, that greatly heightens the economy of its employment. And as to the 
superiority of its work of cultivation, I will just quote the statement of a plough- 
man on the clay land of the oldest steam-cultivated farm in England — Mr. Wil- 
liam Smith's farm, of Little Woolston, in Buckinghamshire — that in turning 
back the wheat stubble in the autumn with the horse-drawn plough, he used 
often to uncover the foot-prints of the horses' shoes which had trod there at that 
depth when turning in the bean stubble for the seed twelve months before. Of 
course it is no part of good agriculture th#t all the produce of the land is to be 
made out of a particular layer called the soil, which has to be cultivated, turned 
to and fro, and stirred and mixed upon an impervious floor hardened by a per- 
petual trampling, below which lies the subsoil. All recent improvements of the 
soil have proceeded upon the idea that there is no essential or necessary distinc- 
tion between it and the subsoil — that thorough drafnage and deep cultivation both 
increase fertility, and that the existence of anything like a pan within thirty 
inches of the surface is injurious. The ability of steam power for the deepest 
cultivation, and its applicability at the same time to the thorough cultivation of 
any depth to which it may be desired to stir or turn the soil without any pressure 
on it except by the wheels of the implement employed, must ultimately obtain 
for it the preference over horses for all mere ploughing and stirring, especially 
of clay land. And a very large share of the horse-labour of ordinary agricul- 
ture will thus be handed over to the steam engine. 

Let us consider how much. I will refer to three instances. On a farm of 
675 acres, occupied by Mr. Melvin, at Bonington, near Ratho, in West Lothian, 
the whole horse labour of cultivation and carriage being converted, as I have al- 
ready said, into weight lifted, amounts to upwards of 100,000 cwt. pulled, i. e., 
lifted one mile per annum. Of this the ploughing and scarifying alone amounts 
to 27,000 cwt., or more than one-quarter ; the harrowing, rolling, and drill culti- 
vation amounts to upwards of 20,000 cwt. ; and the carriage of dung, crops, and 
produce amounts to 60,000 cwt. lilted one mile. The carriage is here an enor- 
mous proportion, more than one-half of the whole horse-labour of the farm, and 
much beyond its average amount in ordinary experience ; but still even here one- 
quarter of the horse-labour goes in mere ploughing, which can all be done by 
steam-power, and so done as that an eight-horse-power engine shall displace more 
than eight horses, and do their work much more effectually. 

Again, on a farm of fen land of 790 acres, occupied by Mr. Atkiu, near Spal- 
ding, Lincolnshire, where the horse-labour of the farm is nearly the same as in 
the last instance, or equal to 100,000 cwt. lifted one mile per annum, the car- 
riage does not exceed much more than a quarter of the whole, while the plough- 
ing is nearly 40,000 cwt., 4-10ths of the whole labour, and the harrowing and 
rolling about 35,000 cwt. per annum. 

On Lord Ducie's farm at Whitfield, Gloucestershire, 260 acres, the horse-la- 
bour amounted to 37,000 cwt. lifted one mile per annum ; and of this 12,000 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



11 



(one-third) was carriage, nearly 15,060 (or 4-10ths) was ploughing and cultiva- 
ting, and the remainder harrowing, rolling, and drill culture. This seems to he 
a pretty ordinary division of the labour ; and if it applies generally to arable 
land, it would appear that though farm-carriage and all the lighter work of har- 
rowing, drilling, and rolling continue to be done by horses, there are still 4-10ths 
of the horse-labour of the farm which may be done by steam. I know that a 
great deal ought to be said of the great advantage of this substitution, owing to 
the more thorough performance of the cultivation which steam-power will accom- 
plish. Ample evidence exists on steam-cultivated farms in this country on this 
point ; but I will leave it to be adduced by others who may follow me, and I will 
continue to speak merely of the saving of the expense which is thus effected. 
It appears, then, that on arable land two-fifths of the horse-labour of the farm 
can be handed over to a power which is capable of nearly twice as much duty for 
about one-half the expense. One other remark on this point, and I have done. 
On examining the horse-labour of a farm of 240 acres of arable land under al- 
ternate husbandry, it will be found that it does not much exceed 500 days ef a 
pair of horses in the year, and that need for it is distributed among the months 
extremely unevenly. Net more than 35 days of a team per month are wanted in 
December, January, and February ; about 45 days a month are wanted in March 
and April, May and June; about 15 days are wanted in July, about 60 in Au- 
gust, 90 in September, and 55 in October, November, and December. August 
and September stand highest; and as there are not generally more than 24 work- 
ing days in each of these two months, there must be a provision of at least 8 \ 
pair of horses all the year, in order that the work of August and September may 
be done. Now the two-fifths of the horse labour, which is proper for steam 
power, is not going merely to displace two-fifths of these seven horses through 
the year; for the ploughing and cultivating, being done by steam, will take, not 
two-fifths, but more than half of the labour of the incumbered months of March 
and April, May and August, and September and October, and so reduce the 
amount to something like 35 days' work during each month of the year, which 
two pairs of horses will more than easily accomplish. 

I believe, then, that by steam-power at least three out of every seven horses 
on arable land may be dispensed with all the year, at a cost not exceeding the 
cost of these horses during the three or four months when alone they are really 
needed on the land. 

The first-class of operations then upon the farm, which includes the ploughing 
and turning of the soil, will be taken by steam-power out of the field of horse 
labour, just as threshing, and cutting, and grinding have been taken by it out of 
the field of hand-labour. 

To the second division of farm work I shall refer but very shortly. It includes 
such cases of ploughing and cultivation as are taken, by very rocky subsoil and 
very crooked hedgerows, out of the scope of the steam-driven plough ; it also in- 
cludes the lighter class of horse-work, such as harrowing and horse-hoeing, which 



12 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



however might very well be done by steam; and it more especially includes the 
work of carriage, which, considering the scattered position of the produce to be 
collected, and the crooked roads along which it must be drawn, I see no proba- 
bility, as long as these remain, of getting done except by horse-power and man- 
ual labour in the usual way. Mr. Halkett does, indeed, propose to remove these 
obstacles, and is therefore able to accomplish all by steam. The third class of 
operations includes the lighter work, requiring skill and thought as well as labour. 
The planting of seed equidistantly within the land may be done by machinery, 
but the culture of the young plant, much of'the hoting of the land immediately 
around it, and its treatment during growth according to its condition, must be 
left to the hand. When ripe it may be harvested by horse-drawn implements: 
our corn crops are reaped, our potatoes may be dug, and roots cut from the ground 
by horse-drawn machines — they must however be gathered into bundles or heaps, 
and ultimately removed by the help of manual labour. 

When stored they are threshed, and ground, and cut, and steamed by steam- 
driven engines, but they must be administered as food by manual labour. Leav- 
ing the vegetable, which, even when living, may be treated to some extent by 
machinery, and when no longer growing becomes at .once the subje'ct of steam- 
driven processes, wc come to the treatment of the animal which it feeds, and 
here we leave altogether the region of machinery actuated by steam, and are con- 
fined to the hand, directed by intelligence. 

Is it not a remarkable thing, however, that agriculture, which was once wholly 
the work of men's hands, but which has long since given up the tillage of the 
soil, and the carriage of the manure, and the sowing of the seed, and three- 
fourths of the hoeing of the crops to be accomplished by the horse — which has 
lately given up the threshing of the grain and the cutting of its straw to be ef- 
fected by steam-power — which is rapidly abandoning the work of reaping to the 
former and of cultivation to the latter — should nevertheless require more labourers 
than ever? — that steam being first, and horse-power second, and the agricultural 
labourer nowhere in the race, considering the three merely as economical produ- 
cers of power, the last should nevertheless be wanted more than ever? 

The explanation lies in this: that agriculture is more and more becoming the 
work of intelligence and skill as well as power — those parts of its processes, 
where intelligence and skill are wanted, are becoming a larger portion of the 
whole. Cultivation is more perfectly performed, and over a greater extent of 
land — the crops cultivated require more labour and are more productive — the 
stock consuming them is proportionally larger and needs proportional attendance. 
Probably each acre cultivated in 1759 employed more manual labour in its culti- 
vation then than each acre cultivated now ; but how many more acres are there 
under cultivation now than then ? Each bushel of wheat grown half a century 
ago involved so much more labour then, that 8s. was the lowest price at which it 
could be grown with profit ; but how many more bushels per acre does land upon 
an average yield at present? Each pound of beef and mutton cost more in wa- 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



13 



<res 33 years ago than now; but we have a double and triple store of food for 
stock ; we have two crops of fattened sheep and cattle where formerly we had 
one, and each supplies a double quantity of meat. 

But, whatever the explanation be, the fact is certain, that the use of steam- 
power on a farm is a part of that system which employs most labourers in agri- 
culture. Mr. William Smith, of Woolston, who has an 8-horse engine for 110 
acres of arable land and 70 acres of pasture, and works this engine only 14 days 
a year in cultivation, and not more in threshing, employs regularly throughout the 
year seven men and four boys, equal to nine men upon the whole, or one to every 
12 acres of arable land and 8 of grass — " more than any farmer in the neigh- 
bourhood employs." His steam cultivation, he tells me, costs him, on the aver- 
age, 10s. lOd. annually per acre on his clays, and 8s. 3d. annually per acre on 
his lighter soil. It has displaced exactly the two-fifths of the former horse-power 
which I had anticipated that it would ; and he says that 70 per cent, of the cost 
of engine-work is manual labour, and only 30 per cent, engine-food, while of the 
horse-wcrk displaced only 20 per cent, is manual labour, and 80 per cent, is 
horse-food. 

Mr. Pocock, who farms 300 arable acres and 300 acres of grass-land, near 
Farringdon, employs regularly 22 men, eight women, and ten boys, equal to 30 
men in all, or one for every ten acres of arable and ten acres of grass. He, too, 
uses steam-power for thrashing, grinding, and cutting, and employs one of Fow- 
ler's steam-ploughs. 

Another gentleman, occupying 410 arable and 190 pasture acres, on the fat land 
below the chalk hills of Wiltshire, and who does all his cultivation by steam, says 

'•' Steam cultivation will lessen horse-labour, I think, one-half, and in some ca- 
ses two-thirds. A neighbour of mine, who has a steam plough, told me that he 
usually kept 18 or 20 horses: he now hoped to do with six. Another, who oc- 
cupies about 2,000 acres of arable and pasture, hopes to do with 13 horses. My 
own impression is, that there will be more manual labour required where steam 
culture is adopted, and that a more energetic class of men will obtain higher 
wages." ' 

Mr. Randall, of Chadbury, near Evesham, who cultivates 500 acres arable and 
200 acres of pasture, employs, with slight variation, 30 men, seven women, and 
12 boys throughout the year, with 70 additional men for three weeks in harvest- 
time — in all, equal to about 42 men regularly throughout the year, or one to 
every 12 acres of arable land and five of pasture. He too uses a steam cultiva- 
tor, and says steam cultivation makes no difference in the manual labour needed 
on the land. All these, more or less, are instances of the cultivation of clay 
land, on which, if by force of character labour-giving crops are cultivated, of 
course the labour of cultivation must be greater than on lighter soils. It is these . 
lighter soils, however, generally, which are devoted more especially to the growth 
of what are called fallow crops ; and, taking the ordinary rotation on each class 
of soils into account, we may, therefore, fairly compare the experience of the 
steam-cultivated farms, as to the labour they require, with the. labour-bills of • 



14 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



other farms, though not quite so heavy. This " one man to every ten or twelve 
acres of arable land, and eight to ten acres of grass," deducting 10s. per acre for 
the latter, is equal to a labour-bill of 50s. per acre per annum on the plough- 
land ; and it is unnecessary to say that this is a very unusual amount. 

On a number of farms in Gloucestershire, whose management I examined 
many years ago, where the pasture formed from one-tenth to five-tenths of the 
whole, the labour-bill reached 50s. per acre very rarely indeed. It was more 
generally between 30s. and 40s. 

On a fen farm near Spalding, of which a most elaborate account of the labour 
used upon it has been kindly given me by the tenant, Mr Aitken, I find that on 
790 acres almost wholly arable, the actual wages paid had during the last three 
years averaged £1,260, or about 32s. an acre. On another similar farm, near 
Chatteris, on 900 acres arable and 120 pasture, the last year's wages were £1,556, 
which is about 35s. per acre on the arable. 

On one of the crack farms of East Lothian, of 630 acres wholly arable, 22 
men are kept regularly, and 35 lads and women, besides 25 or 30 people for three 
or four weeks in harvest; and the wages, therefore, must be about £1,200 — not 
£2 an acre — though potatoes, one of the crops requiring most labour, are very 
largely cultivated. 

The wages on the College farm, near Cirencester, of 400 acres arable and 40 
pasture, are £700 a-year. or 30s. an acre on the plough land. Mr. Stratton's 
farm Manningford, Bruce, near Pewsey, Wilts, 590 acres arable, 65 acres pas- 
ture, and 160 down, costs about £1.200 a year in wages, or £2 per aere on the 
arable land. Mr. Dods, of Anick Grange, near Hexham, occupying 310 acres 
arable and 100 pasture, employs 7 men and 9 women annually, and extra for a 
month, 7 men and 7 women. His wages cannot amount to more than £500, or 
not much more than 32s. an acre on the arable. 

And, as a last instance, I will take the farms of Mr. Edmonds, of East- 
leach, near the Leachlade, Wilts, 2,000 acres arable and 430 acres pastures, 
employing on the average, and taking harvest into account, about 120 men 
and 20 to 40 women. His labour bill must, I should suppose, from his rates 
of wages, which he has kindly given me, amounted to at least £3,200 a-year, 
which is 32s. an acre. It must be admitted, then, that on a comparison of 
these figures, the labour paid for upon steam-cultivated farms is even more than 
on farms where steam-power is used only to drive the threshing mill. 

Agriculture is, in fact, experiencing the truth taught in the history of all 
other manufactures — that machinery is, in the long run, the best friend of the 
labourer. This truth is taught even more impressively by a review of agricul- 
ture generally, than it is by the case of any individual farm. Here are we, 
twenty-one millions of people, producers and consumers, living in this island. 
on a great farm which we may, by the help of such statistics as we possess, 
describe as nearly 19,000,000 arable acres, and probably nearly as much grass, 
employing as farm laboui-, in-door and out, about 950,000 men and 120,000 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER, 15 

women, besides 300,000 lads, and 70,000 girls, or averaging them by their 
probable wages, as has been done before, let us say equal in all to 1,150,000 
men, or one to every 17 acres of arable land, and nearly as much pasture. We 
feed and use some 1,500,000 horses, of which probably 800,000 are strictly for 
farm purposes. We are annually inventing and manufacturing labour-saving 
machines at an extraordinary rate, and every year at least 10,000 horses are 
added to the agricultural steam-power of the country, certainly displacing both 
animals and men to some extent. We have taken the flail out of the hand of 
the labourer, and the reaping-hook is going; on many a farm he no longer 
walks between the handles of the plow — he no longer sows the seeds — he does 
but a portion of the hoeing and the harvesting — and yet, so far from being able 
to dispense with his assistance, he is more in demand than ever he has been. 

I have had returns sent to me by all the leading manufacturers of steam- 
engines for agricultural purposes. Within the past ten years upwards of 40,000 
horse-power has been added to the forces used in agriculture in steam alone. 
If I may single out Messrs. Clayton and Shuttleworth, of Lincoln; Garrett of 
Saxmundham ; Hornsby, of Grantham ; Ransome, of Ipswich ; and Tuxford, 
of Boston, they alone are furnishing 10,000 horse-power annually to the farmer. 
Messrs. Tuxford, among the first to start the locomotive agricultural steam-en- 
gine, inform me that for the earliest suggestion of it they are indebted to Mr. 
John Morton, of Gloucestershire, then agent to the late Earl of Ducie, who 
twenty years ago recommended them to put these little engines upon wheels, 
thus foreseeing the fitness of these powers made locomotive to the circumstances 
of English agriculture. Messrs. Ransome, of Ipswich, were, I believe, the ear- 
liest to receive the commendations and the prizes of the Agricultural Society 
of England for their engines, and now the leading manufacturers of them, 
Messrs. Clayton, of Lincoln, send out ten of them each week, or 4,000 horse- 
power per annum. 

Of reapers, again, since 1851 Burgess and Key have sold upwards of 1,900 
of their improved M'Cormick's reaper, of which 771 were sold last year; and 
they now hold four times as many orders as they did twelve months ago. Cross- 
kills have sold 500 of Bell's reaper, and 800 of Hussey's ; Messrs. Dray have 
sold 800 of their improved Hussey's reaper; Messrs. Garrett have sold 600 of 
Hussey's; 250 of Wood's clever little reaper have been sold last year; and the 
Cuthberts, of Bedale, who have just begun the manufacture of their equally 
clever machine, sold 100 before last harvest, and could have sold four times as 
many. In all probably 4,000 reaping machines were at work last harvest, capa- 
ble of cutting more in a day than 40,000 labouring men, and yet there never 
was such a harvest as the last for the difficulty of procuring harvest men. 
Notwithstanding all this addition to the forces and the machinery of agricul- 
ture, more labourers than ever are required, and, as more labourers are not 
forthcoming, wages rise. 

It is, indeed, possible that some of this general rise in wages of the past two 



16 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



or three years is owing to the labourers in agriculture being, if anything, rather 
a diminishing than an increasing body ; to that I shall refer directly : it is 
sufficient for the present to declare, what ample experience confirms, that the 
need of their assistance is increasing. * * 

However plain it is that its remedy is to be found in steam-power and reap- 
ing-machines and such like, the increase of steam-engines and machines need 
create no fear for the agricultural labourer. 

Here, however, I weuld say, it is no part of my business to fear or to lament 
the progress of events, however they may happen to devclope. Even if the 
result should be that agricultural labourers are to form a diminishing class — that 
at most only one of the labourer's family is trained to take his father's place, it 
may certainly be doubted whether his lot in future life, or that of his brother 
who has gone as a carpenter, mechanic, a soldier or a sailor, is to be preferred. 
The man will do his best to bring up his family for their good and, as he 
best knows how — and if wages fall, most of them will naturally endeavour to 
obtain a maintenance in some better way. I confess my belief to be that there 
are natural safeguards enough in human nature to make the natural result within 
a Christian country, and in a matter so exclusively one of mere maintenance, 
mere profit and loss, a perfectly safe one, and even a desirable one. Only let 
the artificial interference between the buyer and the seller be done away with; 
let knowledge of the state of the market, whether for labour or for its produce, 
all over the country be general; let the price of agricultural and all other pro- 
duce be the natural result of simple competition among consumers, and the price 
of agricultural labour be the natural result of simple competition among employ- 
ers ; let inteligent self-interest — and self-interest in the long run always is intel- 
ligent — let intelligent self-interest lead to the use of machinery and steam — in 
fact lead ichere it Kill — and the greatest happiness of the greatest number 
will the sooner be attained. 

As, however, I have shown, if fears and lamentations have any place at all. 
it is in behalf of the masters rather than of their men. 

One illustration more of the present value of agricultural labour in this coun- 
try, and on this part of my subject I have done. In the autumn of 1849, just 
ten years ago, I applied, through the correspondents of a weekly agricultural 
paper, for information on this subject, and from most of the English counties 
and many of the Scottish ones I obtained answers to printed questions as to 
what is the present wages of able-bodied men, what is their weekly wages at har- 
vest-time, what is the ordinary daily wages of women in the field — what is the 
cost of mowing clover, of mowing meadow grass, of mowing barley, of harvest- 
ing a good ordinary crop of wheat — what is the ordinary rent of cottages, and 
so on. Within the past month I have done the same thing again, and have 
been told the rate of wages by ninety-three gentlemen, residing in twelve Scot- 
tish and thirty-five English counties. There is thus the opportunity of making 
a very fair comparison of wages at a sufficient interval of time. 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



17 



Let me quote a few instances, taking the weekly wage of an ordinary able- 
bodied man as the criterion, and, of course, endeavouring to do it without boring 
you by quotations from so many separate reports. 

In Aberdeenshire, Mr. M'Donald, of Huntly, reported the wages of plow- 
men in 1849 to be £16 a year, with board and lodging; they are now £22, 
with board and lodging. Mr. Grigor, of Forres, reported ten years ago the or- 
dinary weekly wages of an able-bodied man to be 9s. to 10s. ; now he puts it 
at lis. Mr. Bell, of Ferryden Farm, Forfarshire, reported it at 10s. ; he puts 
it dow at 12s. in winter, and 15s. in summer. Similarly, Fifeshire wages were 
9s. and 10s.; they are now lis. and lis. 6d. In East Lothian the wages were 
worth 10s. a week, or 10s. with coals hauled free ; and now they are valued at 
12s. to 15s., &c. In Mid Lothian Mr. Melvin reported the annual wages of 
the married plowmen at 910 lbs. of oatmeal, 12 cwt. of potatoes, two meals daily 
during harvest-time, the hauling of four tons of coal, and £17 in money; he 
now reports them at 1,050 lbs of oatmeal, 8 cwt. of potatoes, four weeks of 
harvest food, coals carted, house-rent free, and £21 in money. Go, now, to 
the south of Scotland, and in Wigtonshire Mr. Caird reported wages ten years 
ago at 9s. a week ; he puts them now at 12s. A woman's daily wage was 8d., 
and it is now lOd. 

In Northumberland, wages, according to Mr. Grey, of Dilston, were 12s. 
weekly, with cottage and garden, and carriage of coals free ; they now are 15s., 
with house and garden free ; and Mr. Dods, of Hexham, gives to good ordi- 
nary labourers 15s. a week in winter, and 18s. a week in summer. Mr. Drewry's 
wages at Holker, North Lancashire, were 13s. 6d. ; they are 15s. to 16s. 6d. 
Mr. Evans, of Wigan, in South Lancashire, reported wages to be 12s. a week ; 
Mr. Twining, in the same neighbourhood, reports them now at 14s. From 
Lincolnshire I had four reports of the wages of able-bodied men, and they run 
thus — 10s., 9s. to 10s., lis. to 12s., and 9s. to 10s. I have four reports 
from the very same employers now, and they run thus — 12s., 12s., 12s., 10s. 
to 12s. 

Mr. Spencer, of Knossington, Leicestershire, told me ten years ago that 8s. 
to 10s. were the wages of the able-bodied men, and he puts them now at lis. to 
12s. Take, now, the case of Norfolk : Mr. Cubitt, of North Walsham, ten 
years ago, put the wages at 7s. to 8s , and the carters Is. to 2s. extra; now it is 
9s., and the carters 10s. 6d. In Northamptonshire, Mr. Grey, of Courteen Hall, 
Northampton, reported 8s. and 9s. as ordinary wages ; he puts them now at 12s. 
weekly. 

In Warwickshire, Mr. Burbury, of Kenilworth, who reported 8s. to 9s. 
weekly in 1849, reports lis. weekly in 1859. 

In Worcestershire, Mr. Hudson, of Pershore, who named 8s. formerly, now 
gays 10s., or 9s. with two quarts of beer a day, are ordinary weekly wages. 

In Oxfordshire, Mr. Druce, of Eynsham, stated 8s. weekly, the carters and 
2 



18 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

the shepherds having cottages rent-free in addition ; wages now are 10s. to 12s., 
plowmen and shepherds from 12s. to 14s. . 

In Wiltshire, the worst paid county in the kingdom, wages were, some ten 
years ago, 6s. to 7s. for ordinary labourers a-week ; they are 8s. a-week at 
present. 

In Kent they were 9s. and 10s., and are now lis. to 12s. 

From Sussex I had three reports formerly, 8s. to 10s., 10s. and 10s. ; and I 
have three reports now, lis., lis. and 12s. 

From Dorsetshire I had five reports, averaging 7s. and 8s. a-week with cider 
or beer and with cottage free " in some cases." I have two reports now, the 
one names 9s., and the other says the payments make the money equal to 12s. 
weekly. 

In Devonshire the wages were 8s. to 10s., and they are lis. to 12s. 

In Cornwall they were 8s. to 9s., and they are 10s. to 12s. 

All this proves, then, that the labouring force in agriculture is better paid 
than it used to be, and that the enormous extension of machinery and of steam- 
power lately has not been to the injury of the farm labourer. 

Although, however, one is naturally to know this, yet no one has any right 
to seek for the labourer any more than that share which falls to him as the 
natural result of mutual competition. It is for the national interest that food 
be produced at the least possible expense ; and in the second part of my sub- 
subject, which refers to the most economical provision and maintenance of the 
forces used in agriculture, the cost of the labour of the farm is as much con- 
cerned as is the cost of horses or the cost of steam. It is indeed the first of 
these to which I most desire to draw attention. The economical application of 
steam-power, and whether Mr. Fowler's plow, or Mr. Smith's cultivator, or Mr. 
Halkett's system be the cheaper, will ultimately, by large experience, be de- 
termined. Messrs. Howard have, I understand, sold seventy or eighty sets of 
Smith's apparatus, and Mr. Fowler is so busy that he can hardly keep pace with 
his orders. Tens of thousands of acres have been this autumn plowed or worked 
by steam; and it will be quite within the scope of our subject if the means by 
which this has been done should be the point on which the subsequent discus- 
sion turns. It will also be in keeping with the subject as announced, if the 
most economical provision and application of horse-powers should engage trie 
principal attention; but of all the forces used in agriculture, that of the 
labourer himself is the one to which I think we can most usefully confine 
ourselves. 

. On the question of efficient steam, agriculturists are willing to accept the 
judgment of engineers and of the outside public. On the question of efficient 
horses the public are not likely to add anything to the experience or the judg- 
ment of the farmer; the question of efficient labourers is one on which wide 
differences exist, on which the possession of mere manhood is enough to justify 
independent thought — on which men of different professions therefore do not 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 19 

feel bound to accept one another's judgment, and on which. I believe that the 
most good is likely to arise from a discussion at a meeting of townsmen with 
agriculturists. All that I can do in the short remainder of the hour is to indi- 
cate the points on which that discussion should turn. 

The object is to retain — indeed I now should say to obtain — a sufficient num- 
ber of well qualified agricultural labourers. The Oxford Farmers' Club met the 
other day, and Mr. Mein, who is, I believe, agent to the Duke of Marlborough, 
read a capital paper on this very subject. His method of obtaining more men 
was none the less sensible for its simplicity; it was just to offer higher wages. 
And this is, I presume, essentially the solution of the difficulty. 

He said in effect: We have not provided constant employment nor wages at 
which a comfortable living can be had, and no wonder that our men have brought 
up their children to other trades to be better paid; we have not paid young men 
wages according to their ability ; married men have been paid at one rate, and 
young unmarried men have been paid at another and much lower rate; they 
have thus been treated as children. But they are not children, and no wonder 
they have left us. Our remedy is to improve the condition of the labourers in 
their cottages; to give them more regular employment and better wages (it 
resolves itself into this, whether a farmer, upon four hundred acres, had better 
spend £100 more in labour, during the winter, or lose £200 at harvest-time in 
shed and damaged corn); to give the labourers more task-work, and allow them to 
earn fair prices at it, simply according to their ability; and lastly, on occasions 
of unusual pressure, to give unusual wages. " Even at harvest, hitherto," he 
said, " the prices have not been anything to compare to the daily wages of the 
tradesman; nay, not enough to induce Paddy to join us in this district." 

But there are other points besides the amount of wages to be paid. These 
will indeed increase — not by the exhortations of our public speakers, but by the 
pressure of competition among masters, and are high or low just according to 
the relation between the resident-population and the employment for them, so 
that in Wiltshire they are 8s., while in some parts of the north they are almost 
twice a3 much. 

But besides the amount of wages there is the mode of payment, which greatly 
affects the character and position of the labourer. It may be (1), in money 
solely; it may be (2), partly in board and lodging in the house; it may be (3), 
partly in money, along with an immense variety of perquisites. These three 
include, I believe, all the various systems of payment adopted. Of the last I 
give two instances from the extremes of the island, Forfarshire and Dorsetshire. 
Mr. Bell, of Ferryden Farm, Forfarshire, writes to me as follows : 

"Our ploughmen receive, per annum, £17 in money, 6 \ bolls oatmeal (14 lbs. 
a boll — present price 17s. 6d.); \\ Scotch pint warm milk (3d. a pint), during 
summer six months, 1 pint in winter ditto; 15 cwt. potatoes, and house and 
garden, at say £3. This for married ploughmen. Unmarried: £20 and £22, 
1 pint warm milk daily all the year, 6J bolls meal, and fire and lodgings in a 



20 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

bothy. At hay and corn harvest they get two bottles of beer daily, and bread 
and^ beer while leading to the stack-yard. Married men get all their fuel driven 
by their masters." 

I value these wages at £34 6s., or 13s. weekly. The daily workers, when 
getting something like steady work, have 12s. a week in winter, 15s. in summer, 
with no beer or other allowance. 

In Dorsetshire, Mr. Saunders, of Watercomb Farm, Dorchester, writes to me 
as follows: 

" In answer to your inquiry respecting the wages of the labourers of this part, 
I will give you an account of what I pay my agricultural labourers of different 
callings. They all live on the farm near their work, where it is convenient for 
most of them to go to dinner every day. I have 18 cottages for which I never 
receive any rent, as my men all live rent free, and most of them have good 
gardens, besides other potato lands free. It is a very great accommodation to 
labourers to reside near their work, quite equal to Is. per week to a man not to 
have to travel a mile to his work morning and evening, and all have their regular 
pay wet or dry weather, no loss of time except they are working by piece-work, 
which most of them get in their turn during the year, when they generally earn 
from 10s. to 15s. per week, according to circumstances, besides their yearly 
privileges, which I will state below, and which many of my labourers have said 
to me at different times ' is nearly half our living,' referring to a cottage and 
garden, potato land, and the privilege of having grist over that of buying bread 
of a baker, as I regulate the grist by allowing a peck a head to the family of 
workers in a house. I think our system is nearly equal to other counties, 
where they give nearly double the wages, and no house nor other privileges, nor 
pay for wet days. In this county we agree for a family at a certain sum from the 
6th of April to the 6th of April in the following year. Some of my men have 
continued on my farm with me for more than 30 years without change, where 
they are good labourers. This, I believe, is about the general run of our county 
as an average. I will now state how, and in what way I pay my horse-men, as 
you term them: 

House, good garden, worth to let, £4 per year, .... 
Weekly wages 8s., and 30 perch of potato land ploughed in with 

their potatoes, often growing 15 sacks, now worth iOs. per sack, 

and allow the seed out, would be £5, - 
200 furze fagots, carried home free to the cottage, ... 

28 cwt. of best coals, carried home at Is. per cwt. and cost to fetch 

from ship, .--.--._.. 
Extra for harvesting, cash £1, and 1 gallon of ale per day, - 
Every journey with team Is., average one per week, ... 
3 quarts of ale per day at haymaking for 8 weeks, at 9d. per gallon, 
1 bushel of wheat per week if a family of small children, none to go 

to work, at 5s., not much advantage now, say 6d. per week, but 

when dear 3s., ......... 



£ s. 
4 


d. 




25 16 
1 







1 14 

2 

9 \0 

i 7 










£39 14 



The whole of horse-man's wages is about 15s. per week. 

My shepherd has the same as the horse-man, except he earns about 
£3 extra for sheep which he shears when no pay is taken up from 
him; and he has is. per score for all lambs bred, which, at about 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



21 



600, is £1 10s.; and also 6J. for every ram let or sold, generally 

£2 10s. in all, . - - 

Take from this the difference of carter's journey money, which is 



Leaving in favour of shepherd, - 
Wages and perquisites as carter's account, 



7 

2 12 

- 4 8 

- 39 14 



£44 2 

Shepherd's wages weekly 17s., all but 2s. in the year. 

Labourer 7s. per week, house as above, garden, potato land in many cases, 200 
of furze, 15 cwt. of coals; grist, as I have before stated, at one peck per week 
for every one who works, great and small, some at 5s. per bushel and some at 6s. 
per busbel; and most of my labourers have piece-work at different times of the 
year when convenient. I consider on an average, a good labourer's place with 
me is full 12s. per week." 

This is a most elaborate scheme of payment, and certainly a very liberal one, 
though I do not value the items so highly as Mr. Saunders does by about £6 a 
year, making the yearly wages of his ploughman £33 14s., or as nearly as 
possible 13s. a week. Now, over large districts in England another system 
obtains, of which Mr. Munster, a tenant farmer at Dumpton, near Ramsgate, 
gives the following very interesting account: 

"Our ploughmen here are generally single, and yearly servants, and are 
boarded and lodged by the farmer or by his bailiff. They are hired from the 
11th Oct. to the 11th Oct. each year; and though they sometimes continue for 
several years with the same master, a fresh agreement takes place every year. 
They commence as lads, at 13 or 14 years of age; their duties then are to drive 
the horses and attend to them in stables, and we also invariably find that the 
younger these boys go into service (as it is here termed) the better ploughmen 
and the better labourers they afterwards become. They begin at about £5 
wages per annum, which is usually increased every year, as their strength and 
ability increases, or as master and servant agree ; the increase goes on at a ratio 
of about £1 per year, and our head horse-man or wagoner gets from £12 to 
£14 per year. The cost of their board varies according to the price of pro- 
visions, and wheD they are boarded by a third party it is generally partly in 
money and partly in kind; they always have meat three times a day, and cannot 
be boarded, on an average, at less than 8s. per week per head. In some few 
instances where there are cottages near, married men are employed as plough- 
men at wages of 14s. per week, and a cottage rent-free ; if they have to pay 
rent, they are usually allowed about £5 extra for harvest, in addition to the 14s. 
per week." He adds — "Our labourers pay about 2s. 6d. per week rent for their 
cottages, and for this many get but a miserable home. I know of nothing in 
this neighbourhood so disgraceful as the want of accommodation for our labourers. 
They are (many of themj driven to reside in the worst parts of the town ; many 
of them in hovels built — or, rather, stuck up — for the purpose of investment, 
without any regard to health, comfort, cleanliness, or morality. No garden 
attached, or anything else to make a poor man's home comfortable — completely 
away from the eye of his master, and all others that feel an interest in his wel- 
fare. The consequences I need not describe. With every inducement for him 
to spend his spare time and his hard earnings at the public-house or beer-shop, 
often having from two to three miles to go in all weather to his labour, never 
knowing the luxury of a hot dinner except on a Sunday, or a meal with his 



9.9. 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



family, the children run the streets in the worst parts of the town, and get early 
imbued in every vice and wickedness. With no father near to instruct or correct 
them, how can it be otherwise 1 I do hope this subject will be pressed before 
the public on every favourable opportunity. I find, on examining my labour 
account, that my best men, on an average of the year through, earn about lGs. 
per week, or little over £40 per year. This includes harvest and haymaking, as 
well as lost time from weather or other causes, and is the man's earnings inde- 
pendent of the rest of the family." 

For all these various customs of payment there must, of course, be the general 
assent of the labourer, and the concurrence both of master and servant, in order 
to their establishment and maintenance ; and so long as a labourer agrees to take 
certain wages, there is not the shadow of a plea for interference by any other 
person between him and his master. The fitness of customs, however, whether 
in the interests of agriculturists who find that labourers are more difficult to hire, 
or in the interests of labourers themselves, may very properly be discussed, even 
by those who have no greater interest in the subject than that which they hold 
in the well-being of any other class of their fellow-countrymen. 

[to be concluded in our next.] 



The Domestic Turkey—Peculiar Habits, etc. 

The domestic turkey, in some respects, is the most valuable bird that has a place 
in the farmer's poultry-yard. It is large, comely in appearance, and its flesh is 
considered one of our richest dainties. It forms the standing dish at our Thanks- 
giving and Christmas dinners. 

To the careful observer, its habits are interesting, notwithstanding they are 
somewhat eccentric, and, what is greatly in its favour, the more we study its 
habits the more we are pleased with it. There is one trait in the male that is 
never unobserved by his female companion, and when calling together their 
broods of young, may sometimes be heard half a mile or more. It is wonder- 
ful to abserve how the little progeny will respond to his voice, if at a distance 
of twenty or thirty rods in the rear, as led by him in their daily explorations for 
food — and especially at the close of day, when returning to their usual place of 
rest at night. It cannot be denied, however, that in this latter respect turkeys 
are deficient in punctuality, and not unfrequently are overtaken by night before 
reaching home. If so, they make an encampment wherever they happen to be. 
But this is not the result of indifference to home, as in the case of the tippler 
and the gambler, so much as to defect in the science of geometry, not remem- 
bering how far they have wandered from it ; or to a deficiency of astronomi- 
cal observation, not having observed how rapidly the time has sped. 

The well-fed male turkey, especially if rendered social by a numerous family 
of female attendants, is a very important character about the homestead. No 
one attracts more notice than his lordship. No one is more tenacious of his 
rights, or more complacent in the enjoyment of them. He is truly an original 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 23 

character, but has numerous imitators. The ineessant pompous display of his 
plumage has ever been deemed an appropriate counterpart of the human being 
which struts and seeks by an ostentatious display of exterior embellishments to 
attract attention beyond any claims founded on intrinsic merit. We cannot fail 
to be amused on seeing either of these animals of the masculine gender thus strug- 
gling for the ascendancy ; but we cherish less respect for the one in broadcloth, 
than for his prototype in feathers. Indeed, the latter, although not celebrated 
for his mental endowments, possesses more intelligence than is usually attribu- 
ted to him ; and, moreover, as the representative of his family, occupies no in- 
ferior rank in respectability or the elements of being useful. He is led by 
instinct, if not by reason, to be a pattern of devotion to the safety of the com- 
munity of which he is the legitimate head. He watohes over the turkey chicks 
with the assiduity of the most faithful shepherd when guarding his flocks. He 
will never leave them, and is apparently unmindful of his own wants so long as 
they require his watchful care. On one occasion, a flock of twenty-odd more 
than half grown young turkeys with the old one were overtaken by night be- 
fore reaching home. The consequence was, they roosted on the fence adjoining 
a cornfield. In the night, eight of the young brood were killed by we know 
not what, and dropped on the ground. For hours in the morning the living ones 
remained on the spot around those that had been killed, the old gobbler and his 
mates making the most piteous lamentations, till we were thus drawn thither. 
For a long time afterwards they were not seen to go near the place of this 
calamity, but daily went in another direction, which previously they had not 
done. . 

It is frequently said that turkeys are very stupid. We were formerly of that 
opinion ; but on better acquaintance with them, we have become somewhat 
skeptical in regard to such opinion. If they possess naught of what is 
usually termed reason, they have a kind of cunning much resembling it. 
The hen turkeys arc noted for stealing away their nests; and if they do it, no 
little difficulty is experienced in finding the place of concealment. If followed, 
the probability is, should they perceive your intention, they will wander about 
for hours until you become wearied and leave them, when they will go to their 
nests and deposit their eggs. On one occasion, it became apparent that a 
favourite hen of ours daily left the yard by flying over the fence, to visit her 
nest. It was usually about 11 o'clock in the morning, and after being absent 
one or two hours, would return and join the flock. Her direction was toward 
a small wood and dense undergrowth of brush. This we noticed for several 
days in succession. Her course was always in the same direction. Every now 
and then she would stop, reach upward her head, and look around to see if she 
was observed. At length we concluded to follow her, at a distance of thirty 
rods or so, keeping behind trees ; but after a while she caught a glimpse of us, 
and although at such a distance, then she turned about and came back nearly 
in the same path, and without enabling us to be the wiser for our labour. 



24 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



This she did several times with similar results, and at last we gave up the at- 
tempt. 

A few instances may be related, illustrating the fidelity of the male in watch- 
ing over the young brood. Our practice is, in a few days after the process of 
hatching is completed, to put the hens into a large coop or pen, of one or two 
rods in extent, with one side at least open with slats or stakes, to admit ingress 
and egress of the chicks, while their mothers, naturally great gossips, are re- 
strained from long peregrinations, too toilsome and hazardous for the tender off- 
spring. On the outside and in the vicinity of the pen, the cock spends his days 
in becoming assiduous to the infant family, and his nights in roosting close by 
it. Quickly does it happen that they become more fond of his society than of 
their pent-up mother's. As soon as his supremacy over them is well understood, 
and their strength admits of it, he will abduct them, no one can guess how far, 
as stealthily as the unprincipled swain runs off with his improvident lass for a 
clandestine marriage. Search for the missing ones is usually as unsuccessful 
in one case as in the other. However, Mr. Gobbler is a far better protector of 
his treasure than the speculating lover, who steals his wife from her fond 
parents. The former never abandons his charge; whereas the latter frequently 
does, leaving his deceived fair one, after being robbed of all she possessed, to 
return in disgrace and poverty to her broken-hearted family. It is amusing to 
see how faithfully the cock turkey, when thus the sole guardian of his children, 
will seek to provide them with food and to protect them from injury. Jn the 
night and in stormy weather, he spreads over them his broad wings, and if a 
hawk is seen, the same is done to shelter them from his marauding descent upon 
them ; if they have become too large to be thus sheltered, they collect around 
him as close as possible, while his gorgeous- crest rises above them, not more 
captivating and alluring to an enemy than the expressive banner which floats in 
the breeze over the well-mounted and strongly-manned fort. 

We annex the following anecdote of a cock turkey we once possessed. 
Among a brood there was one male, a long-legged fellow of a most unique ap- 
pearance. During the period of incubation, or as soon as one of the hens began 
to set — which she, seeming to know the old fellow's propensity, was very careful 
to manage in a vtry private and secret manner — he began to grow uneasy, and 
mounted the fences, watching for the place of her concealment, which he usually 
discovered the first or second day ; when he, by virtue of his authority as one 
of the lords of creation, immediately took possession of the nest, and from that 
time forward, till the period of hatching, went on with the regular process, 
when he brought out his brood and duly carried them forward to maturity, 
when the hen, poor simple wife, was allowed to trudge along at a respectable 
distance, in the true after-honeymoon style. 

Another instance. It appears that a male turkey kept on the farm of a gen- 
tleman in Rhode Island resolved on a revolution in turkeyism. Accordingly, 
he drove from the nest oue of his better halves, where there were twenty-one 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 25 

eggs, and performed tbe duties of incubation himself. The duties were so well 
performed that eighteen young turkeys duly made their appearance. Nor was 
this all. He became so pleased with the female cares of domestic life, that he 
spurned all interference from the gentler sex. When his own brood was fairly 
out of the shell, and finding that others of the household had been occupied 
in the same labour so that there is in all sixty-seven young turkeys to be taken 
care of, he determined to have undivided dominion in the domestic realms of 
turkeydom. This he did by turning the entire female fraternity out of doors, 
and taking the whole care of the nursery upon himself. 

[Southern Homestead.'] C. N. Bement. 



Whitewash. 

Whitewash is one of the most valuable articles in the world, when properly 
applied. It prevents not only the decay of wood, but conduces greatly to the 
healthiness of all buildings, whether of wood or stone. Out-buildings and 
fences, when not painted, should be supplied once or twice every year with a 
good coat of whitewash, which should be prepared in the following way : Take 
a clean, water-tight barrel or other suitable cask, and put into it half a bushel 
of lime. Slake it by pouring water over it, boiling hot, and in sufficient quan- 
tity to cover it five inches deep, and stir it briskly till thoroughly slaked. When 
the slaking has been effected, dissolve it in water, and add two pounds of sul- 
phate of zinc, and one of common salt. These will cause the wash to harden, 
and prevent its cracking, which gives an unseemly appearance to the work. If 
desirable, a beautiful cream colour may be communicated to the above wash, 
by adding three pounds of yellow ochre; or a good pearl or led colour, by the 
addition of lamp, vine or ivory black. For fawn colour, add four pounds umber 
— Turkish or American (the latter is the cheapest) — one pound Indian red, 
and one pound common lampblack. For common stone colour, add four pounds 
raw umber and two pounds lampblack. 

This wash may be applied with a common whitewash brush, and will be found 
much superior both in appearance and durability, to common whitewash. 

Chemical Gazette. 



The Dutch Way to Salt Beef. 

Take a lean piece of beef, rub it well with treacle or brown sugar, and turn 
it often. In three days wipe it, and salt it with common salt and saltpetre 
beaten fine ; rub these well in, and turn it every day for a fortnight. Roll it 
tight in a coarse cloth, and press it under a heavy weight; hang it to. dry in 
wood smoke, but turn it upside-down every day. Boil it in pump-water, and 
press it; it will grate or cut into shivers, and makes a good breakfast dish. 

To twelve pounds of beef the proportion of common salt is one pound. 



26 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



Personal. 
Dr. J. E. Williams : — The accompanying letter addressed to Professor 
William Gilliam of the Virginia Military Institute, you will please give a place 
in your columns as an act of justice to this gentleman, which should have 
been long since rendered him, and oblige 

Yours, truly, 

B. M. Rhodes & Co., 
Office 82 Burly 's Wharf, Baltimore. 



Richmond, October 26th, 1860. 
Professor William Gilham, 

Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. 

Dear Sir, — In prefacing your flattering remarks, in reference to Rhodes' 
Super-phosphate, before the Farmers' Assembly last evening, you spoke of a 
discussion we had with you several years since — growing out of your discovery 
of " Carbonate of Lime" in Rhodes' Manure. 

Not having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and the party who had charge 
of the manufacture of the Manure at the time enjoying our full confidence — and 
being assured by him that you were in error, we consented to take up the de- 
fence. Shortly afterwards we had complaint of the Manure from those who had 
used it most successfully. This lead us to examine the subject; when, to our 
amazement, Professor Bickell's analysis disclosed " Carbonate of Lime" — prov- 
ing your correctness. We immediately suppressed the stock in market, discarded 
the party we had employed, and repaired the damage as far as we were able. 
Costing us many thousands of dollars — besides mortification, which money could 
not restore. . 

We also prepared communication of the facts, with apology for yourself; but 
yielding to personal appeals, suppressed this act of justice — although against our 
convictions, and which we have deeply regretted, — and while made at this late 
day, hope you will receive as earnest of our gratitude for your magnanimous al- 
lusions to our present article. 

We shall be most happy for you to visit and inspect our manufacturing facili- 
ties, also meet the eminent manufacturing chemists Potts & Klett, under whose 
supervision " Rhodes' Manure" has been prepared for near four years past — 
and in the meantime has attained its present high reputation. 

In the manufacture of Rhodes' Manure, no material is used which contains 
less than 70 (seventy) per cent. Bone Phosphate (avoiding those varieties of so 
called Guano containing Carbonates, Iron and Alumina, in prominent propor- 
tions). This is treated with sufficient Sulphuric Acid, (which we manufacture,) 
so as to yield 30 to 33 per cent. Bi-phosphate — we prefer acid in excess — as ex- 
perience proves the value. 

We combine no Ammonia — our object being to establish a standard for soluble 
Phosphoric Acid, the nourishing property of plants; these being, as all are 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



<>7 



aware, a standard for Ammonia — the stimulating property — in dry Peruvian 
Guano. 

TTe also urge upon' Planters to make their own combinations from these stand- 
ard ingredients, and not to resort to these until they have exhausted their stock 
of Compost Manures, but use them as adjuncts. 

"When agriculturists see the importance of making their own combinations of 
Manures, rational agriculture will have commenced. 

"With expressions of high respect, we remain 

Yours, very truly, 

B. M. Rhodes & Co. 

The above communication was intended for the December number, but was 
unavoidably delayed. — [Ed. 



How to Tame Bees— "Ten dollars worth" of Information Gratis. 

Many persons while watching an exhibitor of bees in a movable frame hive, 
at the Fairs, taking out and returning the frames of combs covered with bees, 
and r as they hang in clusters from the frames, removing them by handfuls, with 
no more apparent fear than though they were so many flies, have regarded the 
process as a sort of witchery ; they have thought that none but the operator, and 
possibly a few others, could have such perfect and fearless control over their bees. 
Instead of this being actually the case, it is the reverse; for no person that I 
have yet seen, who has followed the directions for " Taming Bees" that I pur- 
pose to give, has been unable, after a little practice, to have full and absolute 
control over them. I understand that a speculator in Canada has made the pro- 
position " to instruct bee-keepers in the art of taming bees for the exceedingly low 
price of $10 each !" But the readers of the Agriculturist can save their §10 
and learn the whole art by observing the following directions, which the writer 
has practised for years. 

The whole art of " taming bees" is embodied in the following: 1st — A honey- 
bee filled with honey or " liquid sweets," will not sting of its own accord. 2nd — 
Bees when frightened will generally fill themselves with honey; and, if given 
" liquid sweets," will invariably accept of them. Bees may be frightened thus : 
1st. By confining them to the hive, and rapping the sides of it lightly with a 
small stick, or the palms of the hands. At first, the bees will try to get out, but 
finding that impossible, they will then rush to their stores and fill themselves 
with honey. 2nd. By blowing upon them the smoke of punk (rotten wood), 
tobacco, or cotton rags. • • 

TVhat is termed " liquid sweets," is water well sweetened with honey or sugar. 
Sugar is preferable, as bees from neighboring hives, or those in close proximity, 
are not so readily attracted by it. 

For many year3 I used mainly the smoke of tobacco and cotton rags, but this 
season, in all my operations I have used nothing but the smoke of puuk. This 
is not so pungent as that of tobacco. 



23 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



In order to make the foregoing directions a little clear, I will now set forth the 
modus operandi of taming the most irritable colony of bees, in the Langstroth 
hive; which will answer, somewhat modified, for all colonies in all kinds of 
hives. 

Set the punk on fire, and blow a little smoke into the entrance of the hive. 
This will cause the bees at and near the entrance, to retreat and go among the 
combs. Now, take off the top cover, and blow enough smoke into the holes 
or slats of the surplus honey receptable cover, to cause all the bees to go below 
the tops of the frames, when this cover may also be removed. Blow sufficient 
smoke upon the bees to keep them below among the combs. Unless the colony 
be very populous, the bees will now nearly all be found hastily filling their sacs 
with honey, and, will generally be ready to operate upon in from five to fifteen 
minutes. Should the operator desire to commence taking out the combs as soon 
as possible, he may sprinkle the bees with the sweetened water. Those not 
filling their sacs from the cells of honey, will commence at once to gorge them- 
selves with this preparation. I seldom have occasion — except at the Fairs — to 
use the "liquid sweets." I would advise beginners to use a bee-hat until they 
have had some experience — which may then, at times be discarded. 

Reader, just operate upon a colony in the way described, you will probably be 
surprised to find that you can more easily and readily subject the most irritable 
colony of bees to your control, than can Rarey an ordinary animal of the equine 
race. M. M. Baldridge. 

Niagara, Co., N. Y. American Agricxdturist. 



The Persimmon, and its Uses. 

Perhaps there never was a more abundant crop of persimmons than is wit- 
nessed this year. In some parts of the State, if not in all, the fruit is highly 
esteemed, and is indeed of considerable value. There is probably as great a 
variety as we find among apples. The best persimmons ripen soft and sweet, 
having a clear, thin, transparent skin, without any rough taste. A good ripe 
persimmon is a delicate, delicious morsel ; most animals fatten on them ; the 
chicken, duck, turkey, goose, dog, hog, sheep and cow, all eat them greedily. 
The fruit, when mashed and strained through a course wire sieve, makes delight- 
ful bread, pies and puddings. When kneaded with wheat-bran, and well baked 
in an oven, the bread may be put away for winter use in making beer, and used 
when wanted. 

The following, which is Mr. Jefferson's receipt for making beer, is among the 
best : 

Sweet ripe persimmons mashed and strained, . 1 bushel. 

Wheat bran, ........ J bushel. 

Mix them well together, and bake in loaves of convenient size; break them 
in a clean barrel, and add 12 gallons of water, and two or three ounces of hops. 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 29 

Keep the barrel in a warm room. As soon as fermentation subsides, bottle off 
the beer, having good long corks, and place the bottles in a low temperature, 
and it will keep and improve for twelve months. 

This beer, when properly made in a warm room, and bottled as above, is an 
exquisitely delightful beverage, containing no alcohol, and is, to the connoisseur 
of temperate taste, not inferior to the fermented juice of the vine. 

The ordinary way of making it is more simple, and the drink is relished 
heartily by most persons. A layer of straw is put in the bottom of the cask, 
on which a sufficient quantity of fruit, well mashed, is laid ; and the cask then 
filled with water. It should stand in a warm room ; and if the weather is cold, 
fermentation will be promoted by occasionally putting a warm brick or stone in 
the barrel. The addition of a few honey locusts, or apple peelings, will make 
the beer more brisk. Wheat bran always improves the quality. — Farmer's 
Journal. 



From the Country Gentleman. 

Principles of Road-Making-. 

Where so much prejudice and ignorance exists regarding the location, con- 
struction and repair of common roads, it seems almost a herculean task to intro- 
duce any improved system that is at variance with our preconceived notions or 
education. In general character our common roads are very inferior; is it 
from motives of economy, or ignorance of the principles of road-making? We 
are inclined to think the latter, as there is money enough expended to make 
our roads good, if done under the direction of one skilled in road-making. 
That a system of road-making infinitely superior in every respect to that gene- 
rally practiced in this country, does exists, and has existed for a long series 
of years, no one can deny, and that wc can profitably adopt such a system on 
all our principal thoroughfares, is equally true. 

The original blunders of location, many of which were accidental, cannot 
at this late day be easily remedied, still very much may be done to reduce the 
grades, perfect the drainage, and improve the surface of all our common 
road3, and the sooner an intelligent system of road-making is adopted, the better 
it will be for our comfort and our pockets. Under the present legal system of 
road-making and repairing, no innovation of this kind can be easily introduced. 
There are too many men who cannot be made to understand the importance 
of good roads; why a long level road is better than a short up-hill one; why 
they should do any more work on the road than the law compels them ; why, 
a3 a matter of pride, the public road in front of their own premises should not 
be well made and always kept in first-rate repair at their own expense, and why 
it is not highly honorable and just to cheat the roadmaster and public out of 
a3 many hours of their assessed time as possible. We have heard men boast 
of the shabby way they pay their road tax. I am, says one, assessed eighteen 



30 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



days' work; I send my man, or boy if I have one, with my team — they £0 on 
to the road between 9 and 10 o'clock, come in at noon, out again at 2, and 
quit at 5, and count me three days' work. Such is the working of a mise- 
rable law for the benefit and comfort of the community. It may be urged, 
however, that extra time is assessed to cover all such delinquencies ; but 
then all men are judged by the same standard, and in repairing roads, perhaps the 
law is right in assuming that all men are equally honest, or rather dishonest. 

Repairing a road once a year, instead of doing it when it should be done, 
is adding very much to the labor and expense. The lack of all system in man- 
agement, owing to the uncertainty of force that may turn out, and the whole- 
sale ignorance of road-making that exists amoDg the road-making community, 
are glaring defects in our present plan of operations. 

Any law that would compel the payment of road tax in money instead of 
services, would be strongly opposed, and yet there is no more reason why a road 
tax should not be cash than the State tax. Perhaps instead of adopting any 
new system, a better plan would be to remedy the defects of the old, and insist 
on a thorough qualification in all departments of road-making as a requisite 
for the office of roadmaster; let merit be the controlling influence in such an 
appointment, and the exactions of labor be the same as if hired and paid 
for. Pay, such a roadmaster a good salary, and let the business of road-making 
be the business of his life ; give him a district large enough to occupy his whole 
time; make all repairs when they should be made, and if men cannot turn out 
in harvest time, or when otherwise engaged, let them pay their tax in money. 
Any intelligent man can now make a handsome sum by keeping the roads of 
any town in as good repair as they are now kept, if he were paid in cash one- 
half the present assessed annual road tax, and he would do upon the prin- 
ciple that a " stitch in time saves nine," and " anything that is worth doing 
at all is worth doing well." 

A good road is a recommendation to any locality or neighborhood, and speaks 
well for the enterprize of its inhabitants ; it attracts attention from all who 
use it, and pays in pleasure, comfort and business ; it is a part of the machinery 
of transportation, and the more nicely the curvature and gradients are adjusted, 
and the surface even and well kept, the more closely we approach ease and econ- 
omy in movable machinery. 

In this go ahead age, time is the great element that must enter into our calcula- 
tions. Not the road that is the shortest, but the one that can be travelled 
the quickest; not the water-washed gullies of a hilly road, but the hard smooth 
surface, and the light grades that can always be found in any habitable locality. 
A waste of power and a waste of time is very poor economy, and in the 
course of years will count heavily; every one who travels an ill kept hilly road, 
must pay these tributes to the ignorance of its projectors, and hope for private 
enterprise to remedy the blunders. We drive our horses' as we drive our 
business, or anything else we undertake ; we buy them for their endurance and 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 31 

a business-like speed and we know from experience that a good horse has a keen 
appreciation of a good road, and our belief in universal salvation undergoes a 
decided change when we see a good horse abused. 

Geo. E. Woodward, 

Civil and Landscape Engineer, 29 Broadway New York. 



On Sombrero Guano and other Commercial Varieties of Phosphate of Lime ; 

And in reference to their capacity for Munipulatlng and Super-phos- 

phating pxirposes. 

BY CAMPBELL MORFIT. 

A friend has sent us the following article published in The American Farmer, 
with the request that we would give it a place in our columns. This we most 
cheerfully do, as wc are as much personally interested in any light which can be 
thrown on the subject of manures of any kind, as any farmer can be. For years 
past we have been trying with all our energy to improve a poor farm ; and we 
are very anxious to continue our operations in this line, with as much economy 
as may be consistent with the necessities of the soil. We consider it a matter of 
great importance that every farmer should be well posted on the subject of Gua- 
nos of every kind — the Pltosphatic especially — that we may all know whether it 
will pay to use them ; and the quantities which should be applied per acre in 
order to reap the best return for our money expended in their purchase. There- 
fore, we are inclined to publish everything of interest on this subject, although 
we do not recommend the use of Guano to any farmer except as an adjunct to 
the manures made on the farm. — [Ed. 

The two prime elements of a successful cultivation of soils are nitrogen and 
phosphoric acid. The best and most available source of the first, in this' connec- 
tion, is, undoubtedly, Peruvian Guano; which contains, also phosphoric acid. Its 
phosphoric acid exists, too, in active condition for fertilizing utility; but the 
quantity is very disproportionate to the amount of associate nitrogen compounds 
— so much so, that the use of this Guano alone produces abnormal stimulation of 
growth, resulting in rank, but unsubstantial vegetation, as well as premature ex- 
haustion of the soil. In other words, the plant under culture with this Guano 
not unfrequcntly lacks the vigor of constitution requisite to carry it to a healthy 
maturity. To impart this constitution then, the deficiency of phosphoric acid 
must be supplied from sources which combine economy with efficiency of 
material. 

The sources of phosphatic material are of two kinds — mineral and animal. 
The mineral comprises the different varieties of Apatite ; the Phosphorite of 
Estremadura, in Spain ; the plastic clay of Anteuil, near Paris ; and a peculiar, 
rust-looking substance of this market, which I shall speak of directly as Cooper- 
ite. They contain their phosphoric acid as bone-phosphate of lime, except when 
alumina and iron may be present, in which case it is partly phosphate of iron 



32 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



and phosphate of alumina. With better and cheaper materials at ready com- 
mand, our experience in the use of these substances, except the last named, is 
consequently little or none; so we cannot speak from our own knowledge in re- 
gard to them. Phosphorite, however, is a commercial article in England, and. is 
largely employed there in the manufacture of super-phosphate of lime. 

The animal phosphatic materials are Bones, Phosphatic Guanos and Coprolitcs. 
The latter, so called from two Greek words, kopros and lithos, signifying dung- 
stone, may be considered fossil Guano- — being the excrements of Saurians and 
Sauroid fishes in a state of petrifaction. They contain 40 to 50 per cent, of phos- 
phate of lime, with nitrogenous organic matters and carbonate of lime. We 
have no practical knowledge of them in this country, as-they do not appear in our 
commerce even by sample. In England, where large strata exist, quantities are 
used advantageously for manurial purposes; and Baron Liebig, in his "Letters," 
speaks of them "as a substitute for recent bones," and "as a means of restoring 
and exalting the fertility of her fields." Still, notwithstanding all this, phos- 
phatic Guanos continue to be imported into England ; and the Sombrero Guano, 
especially maintains there a successful competition with Coprolitcs, on account of 
its greater phosphatic strength and other advantages. 

The term " Guano" is of Peruvian origin — being a corruption of Huano, the 
Peruvian word for dung. Guano consists of the droppings of sea-fowls, inter- 
mixed with their eggs and skeletons, and the debris of marine animals frequent- 
ing the Islands where the Guano is found. When it is in its original state and 
is more or less rich in ammonia, the Guano is designated Ammoniacal Guano. 
On the other hand, when the Guano has lost all or nearly all of its ammonia by 
time and chemical changes, and assumed a modified condition, characterized by 
a liberal content of phosphate of lime, it is distinguished as Phosphatic Guano. 

The ingredient of value, then in Phosphatic Guanos, is phosphate of lime; 
and it has three distinct chemical states. Tlie proportion of phosphoric acid 
varies with each state ; and corresponding with each state is a different degree of 
solubility for the phosphate of lime, and consequently, also, of its value to the 
planter. By disregarding scientific forms and writing so as to be intelligible to 
the unprofessional reader, they may be expressed as follows, in the usual order of 
their occurrence in nature : 

1. Basic or Bone-phosphate — containing one of phosphoric acid with three 
of lime; 

2. Neutral or Common Phosphate — containing ONE of phosphoric acid with 
two of lime ; 

3. Acid or Super-phosphate — containing ONE of phosphoric acid with ONE of 
lime. 

In this gradation, the phosphoric acid rises from 46 per cent, in the tone-phos- 
phate, to 56 per cent, in the common, and 72 per cent, in the swper-phosphate. 
With each rise there is also a change of chemical and physical habitudes. Thus, 
for example, the acid or super-phosphate is wholly and readily soluble in water; 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



33 



and the common, though not directly soluble, yields easily to the assimilating 
agency of the vital force of the plant. Bone-phosphate, per contra is under or- 
dinary circumstances insoluble, and consequently slow in its action. This slow- 
ness of action varies, however, in degree, with the composition of the phosphate 
material — density, physical structure, and associated substances having, more or 
less, a controlling influence. It should be rendered soluble, therefore, by treat- 
ment with acid, previous to being used on soils. This preliminary treatment 
converts it into — 

Super-phosphate. — Soluble phosphate does not exist ready formed in any natu- 
ral compound, except the Peruvian and kindred Guanos, which may contain, one 
or two per cent., partly free and partly as phosphate of ammonia. When manu- 
factured, by the action of acid upon phosphatic material, the physical nature and 
peculiarities of that material do not affect the quality of the resulting super- 
phosphate. Whatever the source of the product, the latter, if properly made, is 
the same kind of super-phosphate to all of the purposes for which it is intended; 
provided, however, that the raw material is not debased by an excessive pre- 
sence of iron, alumina, or other equally undesirable components. 

As before noted, all fertilizers should contain a due proportion of their phos- 
phoric acid as soluble phosphate, so as to have the power of prompt action upon 
soils. In this way, while the soluble portion is doing immediate service to the 
growing plant, that other or bone-phosphate portion, which may be associated 
with it, is being transformed by atmospheric and other inducements in the 
soil, and prepared for assimilation as fast as shall be needed for accomplishing 
the vegetation. This is particularly necessary when the phosphatic material 
is to be " manipulated" with Peruvian or similar Guano, for the purpose of 
regulating its ammonia-energy; for the maximum effect would not be secured 
unless the phosphoric acid is present in soluble form and sufficient quantity to 
keep pace in activity with the fertilizing power of the ammonia. More than a 
due proportion, however, is neither requisite nor expedient — for if all the phos- 
phate-lime should be in a soluble state, the internal change in the fertilizer 
may cause its reconversion into bone-phosphate ere the plant has had time to 
assimilate it, and thus interfere with the economy of its application. 

Common or Neutral Phosphate. — The White Colombian Guano, so favora- 
bly known in this market a few years since, is the prototype of this phosphate. 
It contained a large quantity of neutral phosphate, and hence was a superior 
phosphatic manure. The supply has been wholly exhausted ; but the reputation 
and even the name of the Guano are still appropriated to substances for the 
purposes of deception, with few or none of the true qualities of Guano. Dr. 
Bickell was the first to announce and establish the fact of its presence in Colom- 
bian Guano. (Silliman's Journal, vol. 23, pp. 121, 122.) There is no longer 
any rich natural source of it. True, the lumps from Jarvis Island Guano 
contain it in association with bone-phosphate of lime, &c, as was first proved 



34 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[Januakt 



by me in my analyses of that Guano, as reported in the " Supplement of the 
Farmer" for September, 1859, and as has been reiterated by Baron Liebig, in a re- 
cent letter upon the same subject. But, unfortunately, these lumps form but 
a limited portion of the whole Guano, the larger part consisting of mealy sul- 
phate of lime. The total of joint phosphates of lime varies, too, in different 
cargoes from 12 to 45 per cent. — the latter being the highest quantity I have 
yet obtained. This Guano is unprofitable, then, for manipulating purposes; 
though, as an independent manure, it will fertilize well to the extent of the phos. 
phoric acid which it may contain. The question in its use is only one of profit 
in relation to its cost. 

Artificially, the neutral phosphate is not produced except incidentally in the 
manufacture of the super-phosphate fertilizers, which almost always contains 
several per cent, of it; more particularly when alkali, or ammoniacal Guano 
forms a part of the composition. 

Bone-phosphate. — This phosphate is typified in bone-dust and bone-ash. Bone- 
dust is the natural bone freed from grease, by boiling, and reduced to a coarse 
powder. It contains gelatin, which is a nitrogenous substance, promoting, by its 
putrefaction, the evolution of ammonia and the disintegration and ultimate 
solubility of the bones. When any grease in retained by the bones, this disin- 
tegration is materially impeded. Their content of lime-phosphate varies from 
48 to 58 per cent.; and therefore, though very serviceable for independent use 
on soils, they are not profitable for manipulating purposes. Besides, bones have so 
many more advantageous applications in the arts, that the supply is rather limited 
for agricultural use. In South America, where they are more abundant, the custom 
is to calcine them or burn off their organic portion so as to render them conve- 
nient for exportation. They reach us then as bone-ash, which is richer in phos- 
phate of lime than bone-dust, proportionately to the amount of volatile and or- 
ganic matters destroyed or driven off during the calcination. The analyses of a 
number of cargoes which have come under my professional examination, prove 
that its amount of phosphate of lime varies all the way from 68 to 80 per cent. . 
but is more frequently nearer 70 than 80 per cent. Thus, on this score, bone- 
ash is as objectionable for manipulating purposes as bone-dust; besides being so 
in regard to its cost and other conditions affecting the economy of its use, which 
need not be stated at this time. The present price of " Manipulated Guanos" — 
§50 per ton — would not justify the use of bone-ash in a quantity to give the re- 
quisite ratio of phosphates to the ammonia. 

Of the phosphatic guanos, the remaining representatives of this class of phos- 
phatic material, there are known to us the white and brown Mexican from the 
Carribean Sea and its neighborhood ; Baker's Island Guano from the Pacific 
Ocean, and the Sombrero, from the island of that name in the West Indies. For 
the sake of making this paper more comprehensive, I will include, also, the so- 
called Navaza Guano, from an island off the coast of Hayti. 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



35 



The Mexican Guanos vary in phosphatic strength from 20 to 65 per cent, of 
bone-phosphate of lime, reaching in rare instances as high as 70 per cent. The 
supply is limited and unreliable. The physical temperament of the phosphate of 
lime constituent, well adapts it for fertilizing action. The Guano, however, is ob- 
jectionable and unprofitable for manipulating purposes. Baker's Island Guano is a 
new article, only three or four cargoes having been imported. It has yet to es- 
tablish a reputation for uniform richness in phosphate. A sample from one cargo 
which I examined gave 73 per cent, of phosphate. The present discussion, at this 
point, then, is narrowed down for the moment to the two remaining materials, viz: 
Sombrero and Navaza Guanos. Their relative composition is therefore to be 
considered. 

Having obtained reliable and impartial samples — three of each kind — of differ- 
ent dates of importation, and put them scrupulously through a course of analysis, 
it was found that their nature, respectively, is as expressed in the following table : 

TABLE No. 1. 





SOMBRERO GUANO. 


NAVAZA GUANO. 




ha 


Jo 


CS 


x . 


«) o 


J = 
- to 

o ** 
n3 o 


CONSTITUENTS. 

■ 


IS 


- <o 


J| 


13 O 


<D 00 

pa «* 

a o 




Q 


</jO 


pq 


> ss 


q.o 






- 


3 


< ° 








Sp.Gr .2.74 


Sp.Gr. 2.61 


Sp.Gr.2.58 


Sp.Gr .2.50 


Sp.Gr .2.52 


Sp.GrS.12 




3.52 
.68 


3.20 
.60 


7.38 
1.50 


2.20 
5.60 


2.10 
.3.20 


3.50 




5.70 


Organic matter, insolu- 














ble 


5.36 


.08 
5.52 


3.43 


1.48 
10.20 


.63 
7.92 


.50 


Organic matte r , soluble 


7.65 


Fluorid Calcium. . . . 


.... 


.... 




traces. 




• • . 


Sulphate Lime .... 


.86 


1.27 


3.87 


2.49 


traces. 


1.15 


Lime, (-with Alumina. 














Silica, and Organic 
















6.97 
5.34 


3.41 
6.55 


4.70 
4.32 


12.47 
2.00 


13.33 
1.91 


18.72 


Carbonate Lime... . 


2.50 


Bone-phosphate Lime 


64.67 


71 42 


65.97 


37.72 


41.77 


19.83 


Phosphate Magnesia. 


2.39 


1.72 , 


1.80 


2.70 


1.30 


.98 


Phosphate Alumina . 


3.62 


2.16 


2.20 


10.56 


6.35 


8.47 




1.95 


traces. 




2.20 


6.40 


3.74 




.09 


.45 


.10 


traces. 


traces. 


.24 


Silicate Potassa and 
















.76 
1.10 


1.28 


1.90 


3.50 


2.50 






6.80 




3.13 


2.24 


3.69 


7.04 


12.77 


20.93 


Tolal 


100.44 


90.90 


100.86 


100.16 


100.18 


100 71 







Commercial and Agricultural Expression. 



Actual Bone-phos- 
phate 

Or, 

Calculated Bone-phos- 
phate 



67.96 
73.78 



73.77 
76.02 



68.14 
70.39 



40.44 
50.76 



43.57 
56.96 



21.17 
33.95 



36 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



The above results show an absolute superiority for the Sombrero and a meagre 
exhibit of the Navaza Guano. In the best sample of the latter, the actual bone 
phosphate is barely more than half the amount existing in the best sample of 
Sombrero; •while in the worst or "Condor" sample of Navaza, it runs down to 
one-third, — the iron and alumina compounds amounting at the 'same time to 
nearly 40 per cent. This unprofitable mixture incapacities it for super-phos- 
phating purposes, is fatal to its character as a Guano, takes it out of the category 
as such, and transfers it to that of the mineral phosphates. Its iron rust appear- 
ance and physical characters generally, and its allied chemical nature with cer- 
tain phosphatic earths, indicate that its classification among them is the proper 
one. It therefore deserves a specific designation, and I propose for it the name 
of Cooperite, in honor of its enterprising proprietor. 

The Sombrero Guano shows a remarkable uniformity of bone-phosphate as 
well as an absence of any material amount of wholly valueless substances. Those 
cargoes coming in now, are several per cent, richer than the average phophate 
of the Guano at the time these samples were imported ; and I am informed by 
a recent letter from Mr. Jullien, the resident chemist at the island, that the de- 
posit contains plenty of even 80 to 85 per cent, richness in bone phosphate. 
We may therefore, expect from the new regime instituted by him in the selection 
and shipment of cargoes, that future importation of the Sombrero, will contain 
even more than 70 per cent, actual bone-phosphate of lime. 

No chemist should hesitate to vindicate the truth of science from sympathy 
with private disappointment or misfortune, and therefore with a becoming sense 
of professional obligations, I find it proper not to drop the examination of Navaza 
Guano at this point, but to carry it further through a course of experiments upon 
its solubility compared with that of Sombrero Guano. Taking the " Done" 
sample of Sombrero, and the " Condor" sample of Navaza, because of their 
closely corresponding densities and subjecting one hundred grains of each in im- 
palpable powder to contact with three ounces of nitric acid liquor of specific 
gravity 1,015 (containing one volume of nitric acid to 29 volumes of water), 
for seven days, at a summer temperature, it was found that the proportions dis- 
solved were as follows : 

TABLE No. 2. 



Matters and proportions dissolved by dilute 
nitric acid. 


"Done" 

Sombrero. 


"Condor" 
Navaza. 


Lime, .... 

Phosphoric Acid, - 
(Or Rone-Phosphate,) - 
Alumina and Oxide Iron, 


22.00 
12.71 

(27.54) 
2.10 


16.80 
9.73 
(21.08) 
7.30 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



37 



Here it will be seen that the Sombrero sample has given up to solution one- 
third more phosphoric acid than the Navaza ; and with this advantage, that it 
still retains nearly sixty per cent, of its original amount for the further action of 
the acid; while the Navaza has been very nearly exhausted of all that ingredi- 
ent, in the experiment, as is shown in Table No. 1. Moreover, the Navaza solu- 
tion has, per Table No. 2, the depreciating feature of 7.30 per cent, alumina and 
oxid of iron, while that of the Sombrero contains only 2.10 per cent. 

These essays were conducted with observed precision, but it would be unpro- 
fessional in me to impose them upon the confiding reader as the counterpart of 
that action which would take place upon the Guano in the soil. It is true that 
nitric solution does occur there, but not as with the force of the liquor which I 
used in these experiments, and which solution, though containing comparatively 
little acid, is very much stronger than it would be under the circumstances of its 
natural incidence in the soil. 



With the object of imitating more accurately the solvent influences in the soil, 
a further set of experiments was instituted with carbonic acid water of specific 
gravity 0,990 ; and this time those samples of Sombrero and Navaza Guanos 
richest in bone-phosphate were selected for the purpose, so as to make the condi- 
tions as favorable as possible. Fifty grains of the " Seguin" Sombrero and an 
equal quantity of the " Ocean Belle" Navaza, in impalpable powder, were put in 
glass-stoppered bottles with eight fluid ounces of carbonic acid water, and there 
left for fourteen days, at the end of which time they were filtered, and the filter- 
ed liquor carefully evaporated to dryness and weighed. These weights show that 
the Sombrero Guano had given up to solution 6.40 per cent, of its substance, 
while the Navaza had yielded only 1.40 per cent. : thus establishing beyond ques- 
tion that the solubility of the Sombrero under atmospheric influence or, in other 
words, in the soil, Is four times greater than that of Navaza Guano. The Na- 
vaza solution exhibited appreciable quantities of iron and alumina, whereas the 
Sombrero barely held traces of them. The Navaza Guano having shown itself 
to be intrinsically so inferior, I took the trouble to extend the investigation to 
the inquiry whether its agricultural applicability could be improved by associa- 
tion, and to that end put through careful analysis representative samples of cer- 
tain " Manipulated Guanos" well known in the market, and which I happened 
to have in my laboratory. To avoid disparaging distinctions in name, I will not 
give them their commercial designations, but tabulate them Nos. 1, 2, 3 ; only 
remarking that they all contain Navaza Guano as their phosphatic material in 
chief; superiority being particularly claimed on that account for Nos. 2 and 3 by 
their proprietors. 



38 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



TABLE No. 3. 

Manipulated Guano*. 



Components. 


Navaza 
and Bones. 


Navaza. 


Navaza. 




No. 1. 


No. 2. 


No. 3. 


Water, accidental 


9.26 


7.86 


6.40 


Sand and Silica 


2.14 


4.64 


10.40 


Organic matter, insoluble ") 
Organic matter, soluble j 


• .46 


.86 


.48 


32.55 


30.03 


30.39 


yielding Ammonia 


(8.40) 


7.40) 


(6.56) 


Sulphate Lime 


5.25 


3.08 


5.38 


Lime (with Alumina, Silica and Or- 








ganic Acids) --- 


4.95 


8.69 


13.76 


Carbonate Lime - 


3.18 


1.79 


1.60 


Soluble Phosphoric Acid (as Phos. 








Ammon.) ... 


1.40 


1.27 


2.95 


Bone-phosphate Lime 


30.98 


21.53 . 


9.32 


Phosphate Magnesia 


1.90 


1.90 


1.80 


Phosphate Alumina 


1.40 


4.16 


5.31 


Phosphate Iron - 


traces. 


traces. 




Chlorid Potassium 


.53 


traces. 


traces. 


Chlorid Sodium - - - . 


.25 


.13 


.30 


Sulphate Potassa 


traces. 


.21 


.52 


Sulphate Soda ... 




.05 


traces, 


Alumina ... 


3.70 


8 14 


8.39 


Oxide Iron ... 


1.30 


5.60 


3.80 


Total - 


99.25 


99.94 


100.80 


Equivalent of total Phosphoric Aoid > 
in Boneplate Lime - j 


38.07 


31.13 


23.60 



'. 



The results in this Table are very interesting, confirming my previous experi- 
ence as to the want of uniformity of the per eentage of ammonia in Peruvian 
i Guano, its variable degree of moisture, and also ite very small proportion of alka- 
Dine salts. While the inspection generally gives over 16 per cent, of ammonia 
for Peruvian Guano, it often runs under and down as low as 13 per cent., so that 
justly it cannot be allowed an average higher than 14 per cent. The large per 
eentage of ammonia in No. 1, as well as the much lower amount in No. 3, may 
be considered as accidental. So also, is there, doubtless, an absence of inten- 
tional fraud in the low amount of phosphates particularly in Nos. 2 and 3, the 
cause being, probably, an injudicious selection of the kind of phosphatic mateiial 
with which their manipulation is effected, or in other words, mistaking the quali- 
ty of Navaza Guano. No. 3 is peculiarly unfortunate in being composed of one 
of the poorest of Navaza cargoes. No. 1 escapes reproach, in a measure, by the 
partial presence of bones, which brings up its amount of bone-phosphate to a fair 
proportion. It may be added that the 8 to 10 per cent, of ammonia and the 55 
per cent, of bone-phosphate claimed for Nos. 2 and 3 in the proprietors' adver- 





1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 39 


tisements, are purely hypothetical, as there are no available raw materials to afford 
such strength of ammonia and phosphates, at the present selling price of Manip- 
ulated Guanos. 

Passing now from the foregoing Table to the following, the latter (No. 4) shows 
the analytical results from two fertilizers made with care in the selection of all 
the materials; the phosphatic element being Sombrero Guano. They are very 
well known in the market, but I shall designate them as A and B, with the ex- 
planation that A is a soluble Phospho- Peruvian fertilizer, while B is a Manipu- 
lated Guano : 

TABLE No. 4. 

• 

Manipulated Guanos, made with Sombrero Guano. 


Components. 


A. 


B. 


Water, accidental ... 
Sand and Silica - 
Oranic matter, insoluble \ 
Organic matter, soluble j 

yielding Ammonia 
Sulphate Lime .... 
Lime (with Alumina, Silica, and Organic 

Acids) - • - 
Carbonate Lime .... 
Phosphoric Acid, soluble 
Super-phosphate Lime ... 
Bone-phosphate Lime ... 
Phosphate Magnesia - - - 
Phosphate Alumina ... 
Phosphate Iron - - - - 
Soluble Silica .... 
Chlorid Potassium ... 
Chlorid Sodium .... 
Sulphate Potassa ... 
Sulphate Soda .... 
Alumina - -* - . - . 
Oxid Iron .... 

Total .... 


9.60 

2.60 

6.70 

17.42 

(7.25) 

20.00 

1.12 
2.27 
'Ufk 
6.88 
20.17 
1.36 
.34 

.80 

1.95 

.82 

.33 

2.26 

.84 


4.72 

4.40 

6-00 

24.50 

(7.44) 

7.18 

2.05 
3-82 
2.80 

38.16 

1.80 

.50 

1.60 

.52 

.33 

64 

1.20 


100.00 


99.82 


Equivalent of total Phosphoric Acid in \ 
Bone-phosphate Lime [ 


41.28 


48.88 


Analytical results could not be more conclusive than those presented in the 
foregoing tables as to the degrading association of Navaza Guano on the one part, 
and the exalting quality of Sombrero on the other, — in regard to fertilizing mix- 
tures. The poverty and objectionable features of the Navaza mixtures are seen 
in 1, 2 and 3, of Table No. 3, as compared with the results in A and B, of Ta- 
ble 4, from Sombrero Guano. No other phosphatic material than the Sombrero 
could be made to yield a fertilizer like A of Table 4, so affluent and yet so well 



40 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

adjusted in all the elements for profitable fertilization : while, the employment of 
SCmbrero in B gives also as rich a " Manipulated Guano" as can be probably 
made at the price charged for it by the vender. With its remarkable capacity 
for superphosphating and manipulating purposes, the Sombrero Guano vindicates, 
throughout, not only its superiority over other phosphatic Guanos, but also its 
title to be considered the phosphatic institution in agriculture, just as Peruvian 
Guano is now known to be the ammoniacal institution in that service. Readily 
accessible ; uniformly rich in lime phosphates ; of inexhaustible supply and at 
low cost ; its existence is a boon of large value to agriculture, and its discovery 
marks an epoch in the history of fertilizers. 

The progress of experience and research allows frequently only a temporary 
position to what is esteemed the best of the day ; and so Sombrero Guano has to 
run its risk of the future. But having been among the first to discern and make 
known its worth, and now after much laboratory experience with it and other 
phosphatic Guanos, being confirmed in my first views of its value, I shall continue 
to recommend it as the best, until it is succeeded by something that, if possible, 
may be superior. JV itvn - JbjLj^Jjyk^M^iXu ft^» u^p*^*A t» J -c/wv-vu*-**. • 

No. 19 E. 12th Street, New York, November 23, 1860. -* 

[American Farmer?] 



Tact and Good Judgment in Farming — How the Profits Accrue, &c. 

The farmer, who takes a correct view of his position, and assigns to each of 
the circumstances which surround him the prominence each deserves, and who 
wisely distributes his energies among his varied interests, according to their rela- 
tive importance, is called a successful farmer. Such he surely is. Success is 
the invariable reward of well directed energy. 

The converse of this proposition is as forcibly true. The cultivator who, in 
ignorant or willful defiance of every principle of success, withholds his energies, 
or misdirects them by applying to unprofitable subjects, or unwisely distributes 
its relative force to each, becomes an unsuccessful farmer. 

This is about all that constitutes the difference which we observe in farmers. 
Money does not make it, for one will commence with wealth and end in poverty, 
while his neighbor will commence in poverty and end in competence. Tt is not in 
education, for the educated man (educated in schools,) will frequently run his 
race to financial ruin, while his ignorant contemporary (ignorant of scholastic 
trash,) will pave his way to fortune. Wealth, learning, zeal, position — all yield 
in this struggle for success to simple tact, or the judicious application of energy 
to the right object. 

" What interest demands a larger portion of my attention ?" This inquiry 
each should make for himself, and measurably each must answer for himself. 
Herein lies our skill. Herein is the key to our success. No special rules can be 
given, applicable to all localities, and all circumstances ; but each must look 
around him and discover his "lead." If we live a hundred miles from market, 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



41 



it will not be wise to grow strawberries for it, especially, if equally distant from 
rail or water conveyance. There are a thousand other things we might do, which 
would be equally silly. 

Without reference to particular localities, we may assume in general, that stock 
raising is our leading agricultural interest, and that the most successful grower of 
horses, cattle, sheep, &c. will be the most successful farmer, and, conversely, the 
farmer who comes the nearest to failure in this department of industry comes the 
nearest to being frustrated in his hopes and aims. It is true regarding only the 
immediate present, and reckless of the years that lie a little way beyond, a farmer 
may sometimes realize gains a little faster, by raising grain exclusively, yet in the 
stretch of a very few years, he learns to his sorrow that the race is not always to 
the swift. 

And why is this ? We think the truth is found in these simple considera- 
tions : 1st. A supply of stock is necessary to answer an imperious demand 
founded in our necessities — horses and oxen for our carriages and plows, cattle 
for our beef, cows for our butter and cheese, sheep for our mutton and wool. 
These demands are based in absolute necessities of our condition, and must be 
supplied independent of any whimsical caprice of fashion of the times. 2d 
The materials for enriching our soils are principally supplied by our stock, and 
such must ever be the case. Guano, superphosphate, etc., and even green man- 
uring are, in our opinion, but temporary and questionable expedients, and can 
never supply the continued absence of animal manures. These considerations 
are sufficient to justify the assertion made in the preceding paragraph. 

Shall we all become exclusively devoted to stock raising ? Not at all. None 
are so stupid that they cannot easily foraiee the result of such a procedure. Only 
.let us give the prominence to this department«of our business that legitimately 
belongs to it, and prosecute it with that degree of skill and energy which is at- 
tainable by all, and which leads to success. 

What constitutes success in stock raising ? This is made up of two elements- 
1st. When by the skillful application of principles and combination of elements, 
we succeed in producing the desired result, independent of pecuniary considera- 
tions. This is gratifying to pride, and is the legitimate calling of the amateur- 
2d. When by the exercise of judgment and economy, we succeed in raising a 
horse, at an expense of fifty or seventy-five dollars, which will sell for one hun- 
dred or more, or is good for that amount to wear out ; to make a pound of beef 
for four cents, and sell the same for six cents; to grow a pound of wool at a cost 
of twenty-five cents, which will bring forty cents in market ; in other words, to 
produce marketable commodities at a less cost than they will bring. This con- 
stitutes success in the pecuniary view of the matter, and is what we, as farmers, 
are striving for ; and having done this, our success or profits will be proportioned 
to the capital invested. 

We may be indulged, perhaps, in one more inquiry. How is the thing to be 
done ? Ah, that is the nut that is to be cracked ! Our space in these columns is 



42 



THE SOUTHEKN PLANTER. 



[January 



limited ; we have not room to swing a ponderous sledge, even if we possessed 
one ; so a few taps with our little hammer is all that remains for us to do. 

1st. Begin at the beginning. Well begun is half done. Let us select the 
best breeders within our reach, but not regardless of expense. Profit is our ob- 
ject, and only a few, very few, can buy five hundred dollar bulls, or one hundred 
dollar rams, and realize on the investment. Ten have lost money in such specu- 
lations where one has made it. But let us do the best we can do safely. 

2d. Animals in embryo are subjects for profitable attention. The character- 
istics of the parents will develop themselves in the offspring, and if starvation 
and general neglect are prominently exhibited in the former, we may look as con- 
fidently for their manifestations in the latter. 

3d. It is a decided advantage to have the young come early. They must have 
milk, or its equivalent, a certain period of time, before they are ready for pasture, 
and if sufficiently forward to take the first fresh bite, much is gained for their 
subsequent growth. 

4th. We must never let a day pass, summer nor winter, without improving the 
condition of our animals. This can be done, and must be done, or we become 
losers. The moment we feed without accomplishing an increase of weight, we 
feed at a loss. Circumstances mustdetermine how rapidly it is profitable to push 
this improvement. It is a very easy matter to feed too much grain; we must 
feed as little as will sufBce for our purpose. 

5th. We must have the right kind of fixtures. We can do nothing right 
without them. Stables and sheds, warm, dry, ventilated and convenient; water' 
good and abundant. The difference between these and the absence of them can- 
not be explained to the uninitiated; they must be tried to be appreciated. 

6th. Strict economy of fodder. There must be no waste. If a farmer feeds 
20 cows, or their equivalent, for 180 days, and allows each to waste one pound of 
hay each day, the waste amounts to over one and three-fourths tons, which at 
twelve dollars per ton, amounts to the interest on three hundred dollars, at seven 
per cent. A few such leaks would sink a pretty large ship, or at least keep the 
navigators hafd-at the pump. — The Rural American. 



Discussion About Sheep. 

AT THE NEW YORK STATE FAIR. 



Mr. John Wade, of Canada, was asked to state what sort cf sheep he raised 
for mutton. He said he preferred the long wool sorts, because they are more 
hardy. The mutton sells readily, and the wool, though not worth so much per 
pound as the fine wool sorts, produces so much more than the value of the fleece, 
is equal. We don't grow much corn, but we feed a great many roots, and feed 
well. It is foolish to try to keep any animal upon low diet. We feed anything 
that sheep eat best, and I fatten principally upon turnips and hay, with a little 
meal. The long wool sheep are better adapted to Canada than the fine wool. 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHEEN PLANTER. 43 



We shear eight pounds of clean wool per head. The Cotswold variety are pre- 
ferred ; they have stronger constitutions than the Leicester sheep. 

Mr. Pettibone, of Vermont— If a man keeps hut few sheep, he should keep a 
mutton breed. If he keeps a large flock, or say 200 or 300, he should keep the 
fine wool sorts. The trouble in sheep-breeding is in letting them run_down in | 
October- I Winter 300 head, and 100 ewes will give 100 lambs. I use 400 
acres, but many of them are on the mountain, and are valued at only $7 an acre. 
I do not let all my ewes breed. I keep my sheep in very close winter quarters, 
on hay. I feed breeding ewes one peck of corn a day to 100 head. In eleven 
years I have not had a lamb die, and they are kept without grain, but always with 
water and salt by them. There is a material difference in the value of the fleece, 
according to the way the sheep are kept. I prefer to have my sheep always fat. 
In January I select my ewes, and never sell the choice ones. I have an ewe that 
has produced eighteen lambs, and shears four pounds of wool. I do not select 
the most gummy sheep for my. use; they are much more tender than those less ^ 
gummy. Still, you must have greasy wool if you have fine wool. I feed gene- : 
rally twice a day — sometimes only once. 

Mr. Baker, of Steuben Co., N. Y. I commence in October, after hard frosts, 
to feed grass to the lambs, and when winter commences I put them in yards and 
feed hay twice a day in broad racks. I never kept coarse wool sheep. My flock 
average 4 to 4£ lbs. per fleece— not of the gummy sort. I stable my sheep in 
motet. I keep 400 head, divided into three flocks, by two partitions. The gross \ 
sales average about $2 a head for wool and- sales of sheep. I feed very regularly j 
as to the time and quantity. I recommend the increase of our flocks, as they 
greatly improve our farms. I feed roots to ewes 20 days before lambing. I have 
kept 800 sheep a year on less than 200 acres in the farm, both summer and win- 
ter feed. I have raised 120 bushels of corn on an acre of sheep manured land. ; 
The water on my farm is limestone. 

Gen. Hammon, of Monroe, Co., N. Y— I commenced with fine wool sheep, 40 
years ago. I then tried Leicestershire, and then came back to Merinos. I have 
less than 200 acres, and grow 30 or 40 acres of wheat every year; the land im- 
proves by sheep. My average lot of fleece is 5 lbs. I keep 330 head, and get 
over $700 a year for wool and increase. I stable 50 sheep in a room 14 X 40 
feet, without change in the winter. I wash my sheep clean and let them run six 
or eight days, and then shear. I don't breed from gummy sheep. I feed in 
board racks, with straight sticks, so that the sheep can put in their heads. ^ There 
are about 25 acres of reclaimed land on my farm that will keep sheep alive, but 
will not fatten them. My farm is limestone, and I prefer fine wool sheep to any 
other for profit ; and I consider sheep twice as profitable as cattle on any grain 
farm. I never breed from ewes less than three years old. I do not like the | 

cross of the Leicester bucks upon fine ewes. I have sold of wool and sheep over 

8000 a year. 

Lewis F. Allen, of Black Rock, N. Y.^-I have kept sheep 25 years upon a 



44 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



clay loam, natural to sweet grasses, limestone formation, on the Niagara River. 
There is no rule as to the profit of keeping sheep. All depends upon circum- 
stances. In Canada 1 have seen the best long wool sheep I ever saw, but the 
sheep are too fat for eating. You might as well dine off a cake of tallow as such 
meat. Such sheep may be as profitable in the United States. With me, those 
sheep require good shelter. They are not kept warm by their long fleeces. My 
sheep sheared 5 to 8 pounds of wool. I do not approve of feeding many roots 
excepting to breeding ewes. They are likely to scour sheep, at least they do 
mine. 

Mr. Brown, of Orleans Co., N. Y. — I have bred both coarse and fine sheep. 
I have yearling coarse wool sheep that weighed 150 pounds each at one year old- 
I find the coarse wool breed the most profitable. My sheep average 5 pounds of 
wool, that sell at 31 cents a pound. My sheep are a cross of Cotswold, and are 
close wooled and hardy. I live on gravelly loam, wheat soil, and I think it de- 
sirable to increase the stock of sheep in this State. A field of clover fed off by 
sheep, will yield more wheat than if not fed off. 

Lewis F. Allen — On some soils it may be best to plow in clover; on other soils 
it is not. As to mutton sheep, I have fed Southdowns, and the cheapest way 
that I can make mutton, is upon grass, and wethers of 150 pounds bring 5 cents 
a pound gross at Buffalo. I would keep mutton sheep if I had a good farm on a 
rail-road. I can always sell my lambs at $2. My Southdown fleeces bring SI. 50 
average. Southdown mutton is the best we have, and the sheep always sell well for 
mutton. The fine wool sheep mutton is apt to taste of the greasy wool. The Me- 
rino sheep are a hardy race of sheep, but they are not a good breed to keep, where 
mutton is the main object, and I would not keep a breed for mutton that produce 
carcasses all fat, like some of the long wool sorts. 

N. Solon Robinson, of N. Y., was called upon to state what sort of sheep sell best 
in the New York market, which he has so long reported for the Tribune. He sta- 
ted in substance as follows : Southdown sheep always outsell every other variety 
n New York to our first-class butchers, but they are not appreciated by the whole- 
sale butchers, who are mostly Irish and Jews. There is always a good demand 
for choice Southdowns, particularly lambs, and the half-blood ones bring about as 
high prices as full-blood ones would, if brought in early in a first-rate condition. 

; Samuel Thorne, of Dutchess county, buys good common ewes every year, and 
breeds them to his full-blood Southdown bucks, and gets early lambs, which sell 

| at $4 or $5 a head. He clips the ewes, and fattens and sells them, and the sales of 

i lambs, fleeces and ewes average about $7 a head over the first cost. This makes a 
.very pleasant and profitable stock business, and should be largely increased, as the 
market is good now, and improving every year for such choice and fat sheep. The 
most profitable breed for the New York market is the long-wooled, heavy-carcassed 
sheep. This sort always sells well by the pound; it does not matter that the car- 
casses are loaded with fat ; the mass of mutton eaters in the city are not such as 
appreciate the finest sorts of meat. Sheep generally sell by the head, and those 



; 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 45 

which are the heaviest, not the best, bring the most money. Early lambs will 
average §5 a head, the latter ones S3, if fit for the market. — Rural American. 



Recipes, &c. 

PUDDING. 

Compounded of eggs, beaten up-in a splatter ; 
A quart of new milk and a wee bit of butter ; 
Baked brown in an oven, and eaten while hot, 
Is a pudding, than which, nothing's better, I wot. 

Nelly Eysler, Harrisburg, Penn. 

CONTENTMENT PUDDING. 

Pare dozens of apples, or less, as you need them; 

Then try, without breaking, to both core and seed them. 

Fill each excavation with sugar and spice, 

(Either nutmeg or cinnamon taste very nice.) 

Place the apples in rows in a well buttered platter; 

Pour over them lightly, a delicate batter. 

Icing for Cake. — Beat the white of one egg perfectly light; then add eight 
tea-spoonfu's of loaf sugar, pounded fine and sifted, very gradually, beating it 
well; after every tea-spoonful add one drop of the essence of lemon or rose 
water to flavor it. If you wish to color it pink, stir in a few grains of cochi- 
neal powder. Lay the frosting on the cake with a knife, soon after it is taken 
from the oven; smooth it over and let it remain in a cool place till hard. To 
frost a common-sized loaf cake, allow the white of one egg and half of another. 

Jumbles. — Weigh half a pound of butter, three-fourths of a pound of flour, 
half a pound white powdered sugar ; put by a little of the sugar to roll them 
in. Beat two eggs well, add a little nutmeg; this must be made into a soft 
dough; do not roll it on the paste-board, but break off pieces of dough the size 
of a walnut, and make into rings; lay them on tins to bake, an inch apart, 
as it rises and spreads. A moderate oven. 

Parisian Mode of Roasting Apples. — Select the largest apples; scoop out 
the core without cutting quite through ; fill the hollow with butter and fine, soft 
sugar ; let them roast in a slow oven, and serve up with the syrup. 



How to Extract the Bitter Quality from Yeast. 

Bake a small piece of bread quite black and drop into the yeast; or, if it be 
very bitter, put a small quantity of bran into a small sieve, and strain the yeast 
through. These remedies have been tried and never have been known to fail. 

Or. — Pour cold water over the yeast some time before you require it. The 
yeast will Bink and the bitter quality remain in the water, which pour off. 



46 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

For the Southern Planter. 

Letter from Dr. Higgins, of Baltimore. 

Messrs. Editors: 

Dear Sirs — In an editorial of the August No. of the Southern Planter, on 
Manipulated guano, you expressed the idea that the " father of the theory" had 
not been fully recognised, and that he would be entitled to the lasting gratitude 
of the agricultural public. In your September No. is a communication from 
John Kettlewell, of Baltimore, Md., in which he claims to be "the sole and 
exclusive originator of Manipulated Guano, in name and substance." 

How far this claim of Mr. Kettlewell's can be substantiated, I leave it for the 
public to judge, after considering his certificates and the facts which I shall 
offer in relation to the matter. The certificates testify that in 1857, Mr. Kettle- 
well used a mixture of Peruvian and Mexican Guano, with good effect, on wheat. 
Some others testify to his having mentioned it to them before his connection with 
Mr. J. S. Reese, and one, (J. J. and F. Turner's statement,) that Mr. Kettlewell, 
in December, 1855, or January, 1856, asked them to join him in the mixing of 
Guano by machinery. The Messrs. Turner, therefore, gave to Mr. Kettlewell 
" whatever particular merit" might be due to him from " making (mixing, I sup- 
pose they mean,) Guano by machinery." Another certificate states that Mr. 
K. had made some Manipulated Guano in February or March, before his 
connection with Mr. Reese. None of these proofs, adduced by Mr. K. to 
prove his claim as the "sole and exclusive originator of Manipulated Guano, in 
name and substance," extend further back than January, 1856, or at most to 
December, 1855. He adduces, I naturally presume, the best evidence he can 
to support his claim, but no one proves, or attempts to prove for him that he 
was the originator, in name and substance, of the mixture of Peruvian and 
Phosphatic Guano, known as Manipulated Guano, before December, 1855. 

My claims to the origination of the use of the mixture of the two diverse 
kinds of Guanoes, now sold as Manipulated Guano, are the following, which I 
submit to the judgment of the public. 

In September, 1852, in an article published in the Baltimore Sun, I depre- 
cated the use of the enormous quantity of Peruvian Guano then recommended 
in the Agricultural paper of the State, and recommended for each farmer to 
mix for himself Peruvian and Mexican Guano, with the addition of oil of vitriol, 
to increase the solubility of the Mexican Guano. Here, at once, was the 
principle enunciated of the superiority of a mixture of the two Guanoes over 
the Peruvian alone. The use of oil of vitriol being troublesome, many persons, 
by my advice, used the mixture without it with successful results. In my Report 
to the House of Delegates, made early in the winter of 1853, of which some 
fifteen thousand copies were printed for general circulation, I laid it down as a 
fundamental maxim that Peruvian Guano should not be applied alone, but 
mixed with Mexican Guano, then the only Phosphatic Guano in our markets, or 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



47 



some other substance, known to be deficient in the soil. My attention was first 
directed particularly to this subject on account of the excellent action of some 
Patagonian Guano, which containing only half as much ammonia as did the 
Peruvian, yet acted equally well. Many persons asked my advice in relation to 
it, and [ advised them to use a mixture of Peruvian and Mexican, as furnishing 
the same material at less cost. Here, then, was the principle published to the 
world, and the very thing itself recommended. 

But not only this. In my Third Report to the House of Delegates, of Mary- 
land, of which fifteen thousand copies were published for general circulation, I 
recommended the mixture of Peruvian and Mexican Guanoes under proper con- 
ditions, these conditions being " the absence of a knowledge of the proper 
quantity of Phosphates in the soil." See page 106, Third Report of James 
Higgins, State Agricultural Chemist to the House of Delegates, of Maryland, 
and on page 107, of same Report, when speaking of Peruvian Guano, I further 
state, " That its efficacy is greatly promoted by the addition of other saline sub- 
stances, such as Mexican Guano, &c." On page 105 of same Report, I recom- 
mended " the mode of preparing Guano for use," that it be in a fine state of 
division, as a thing of almost vital necessity. In a table of " analyses of soils, 
from various parts of the State," page 121, of same Report, the almost constant 
deficiency of phosphoric acid is shown, and on these, and similar soils, of course 
the mixture of the two Guanoes is recommended. This advice was given to the 
owners of these soils in 1852, or as soon as they called after the making of the 
analyses. 

In my 4th report made in 1854, I state that " the use of Peruvian Guano 
without any mixture with other common phosphates as it is so frequently applied, 
is costly and useless," and that a rational husband-man should use " a mixture 
of Peruvian and Mexican Guano, or other phosphates," and the reason for sueh 
advice clearly given. The causes of the excellence of this mixture and the ra- 
tionale of its operation are distinctly set forth, and more strongly and thoroughly 
than had been before. See 4th report of St. Ag. Chew, to House of Delegates, 
page 56. In the same report, page 59, I expressly state that Peruvian Guano 
should not be applied alone, but its use should be accompanied by other sub- 
stances absent or deficient in the soil, and show by facts and figures that its use 
alcne will impoverish some soils and so reduce them, that Peruvian Guano alone 
cannot possibly be used with any profit. Furthermore, on page 61, is a letter 
from Mr. Puchardson, who purchased a farm of Mr. Gossntll, a near neighbor of 
Mr. Kettlewell, and in the Custom House with him, detailing the result of an 
experiment, which he made with a mixture of Mexican and Peruvian Guano 
and Peruvian alone, the result being very greatly in favor of the mixture. This 
result was made known to me in 1853, with some others, and very many used 
the mixture of the two guanos on their wheat, more generally that perhaps from 
the great scarcity of Peruvian Guano in the Summer and Fall of that year. In 
the Fall of 1854, an increased number of farmers in various parts of the State, 



48 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

used it, and the employment of the two guanos had become very general. It 
was not until the Spring of 18*5 that the guanos ready mixed, were offered for 
sale in this market, under the name of " Manipulated Guano," by John S. 
Reese, Mr. Kettlewell being a silent partner and mixing the guano at his mill, 
where for several years before he had been mixing various substances and selling 
the mixture under various names as fertilizers. The recommendation for the 
use of the two guanos instead of the large quantities of Peruvian, was continued 
by me during my whole term of office, in each report of which, about 25 thou- 
sand copies annually were printed and circulated, until a different political party 
came into power and I was removed from office by the Governor of the American 
party. 

The above is a full history of the origination, in theory and practice, of the 
use of the two guanos, from which it will be seen that by my recommendation 
it was successfully used years before Mr. Kettlewell or his partner Mr. Reese, 
either made, sold or used it; and, that it was after farmers and planters had again, 
and again ; year after year tested its value, that Mr. Kettlewell, having a mill in 
which he had before mixed and ground various substances, mixed, ground and 
sold, a mixture of Peruvian and Mexican Guano, under the name of Manipu- 
lated Guano, to meet a public demand. Mr. John S. Reese disputes with him 
the credit of having first mixed these guanos by machinery, and between them 
I shall not attempt to decide, because there was nothing new in the mills or ma- 
chinery used by them. 

Let now the public judge from the above statement of facts, how much "de- 
votion of the best years" of Mr. K.'s life, what "pecuniary sacrifices and diffi- 
culties" and the "amount of patient toil, of which no man can know but my- 
self " (Mr. Kettlewell's own self), it cost for him to be the originator of the 
mixture of the Phosphatic and Peruvian Guano ! * * * * 

Since Mr. Kettlewell's publication, some other individuals have claimed for 
themselves or others the credit of the origination of the mixed guanos, and 
amongst them are Mr. Samuel Sands, the publisher of the Rural Register in this 
city, and Mr. B. M. Rhodes who is the agent for a Philadelphia manufactured 
Super-phosphate of Lime. Of the former I will only state that his own paper, 
the American Parmer, refutes all that he says about the matter, and that now 
Mr. Sands is selling a refuted Manipulated Guano by the aid of an analysis of 
Dr. Charles Bickell, who never made an analysis for him. 

Messrs. B. M. Rhodes & Co., in a late number of your journal, claims that 
Dr. Bickell originated the mixture, and attempts to prove it from a book, be- 
longing to me, which one of that firm holds unjust possession of. Now Dr. 
Bickell never claimed this merit for himself, as many persons here can testify to. 
Mr. Rhodes has again and again proclaimed me to be the originator years a»o. 
In the pamphlet which he published in 1857, advertising his Super-phosphate of 
Lime made from my formula, on page 7, he says : " To Dr. James Higgins, the 
State Chemist of Maryland, is due the credit for his bold opposition to the exces- 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



49 



sive use of Peruvian Guano, and for his introducing into practice the combined 
use of Peruvian and Phosphatic guanos, now so generally adopted by our farm- 
ers." And again, on page 23, of same pamphlet, we find the following : " The 
propriety of using mixtures of Peruvian and Mexican Guanos, on many soils, is 
no new invention, but was recommended several years since by Dr. James Hig- 
gins, our State Chemist, and since then has been practised among farmers in 
various parts of the State, before the words " Manipulated Guano" were ever 
heard. This we can prove by a host of witnesses, " copyright secured" notwith- 
standing. Yet, now Mr. Rhodes, with what sense of justice I am at a loss to 
conceive, attempts to deprive me of what is justly my duo and give it to Dr. 
Bickell. Dr. Bickell himself, would, I am assured, have scorned to appropriate 
it to himself — the honor which he knew was due to me. 

Let Messrs. B. Mi Rhodes & Co., hereafter strive to introduce their Northern 
goods on Southern lands, as best they may, but let them not attempt to dishonor 
the name of a noble gentleman, by claiming for him, that which he never claimed 
for himself. 

With the above statement of incontrovertible facts, I leave the matter to 
the judgment of an honest and intelligent public. 

James Higgins, 
Analytical and Consulting Chemist, 

No. 91, Second st., Baltimore. 



For the Southern Planter. 

Hew Process of Curing Tobacco. 

Dear Sirs, — Deeming it expedient that the Tobacco growers should know 
that the curing of Tobacco is no longer a mystery, or a work of chance, but a 
science, I am induced to make this communication. The process of curing is an 
invention of a well known gentleman living in my county by the name of Drum- 
mond ; a son of a former contributor to your paper, who styled himself " Cold 
Mountain." 

The curing is done by means of a furnace, which is of the simplest structure 
possible, while at the same time it combines every advantage to be desired ; is 
free from danger of burning the Tobacco barn, requires less fuel, less time and 
labour, and has the quality of curing any colour desired. 

I witnessed the curing with this new invention, and it was a most happy suc- 
cess ; the Tobacco cured was lot Tobacco, very watery and green, and it was 
cured to an orange colour by design. I verily believe this invention is destined to 
supersede all others in the way of Tobacco curing, and were it not for the fact 
that the inventor has applied for letters patent, I would give a full description of 
the invention and manner of curing, but not wishing to infringe his rights, I 
will say no more, as he in due time, no doubt, will set it before the people. 

Amherst. 
4 



50 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



From the Working Farmer. 

"Under-Draining—Will it Pay?~Its Cost per Acre. 
Nothing should interest the progressive American farmer, in the present state 
of agriculture in the United States, more than the subject of under-draining. 
There are many acres of useless land in each State that might be made produc- 
tive by opening ditches, or a system of drainage, to carry off the surplus water 
that now remains on the surface, a barrier against improvement. Many fields 
now yielding pitiable returns, may, by a judicious expenditure in thorough 
under-draining and deep disintegration, be made to at least double the present 
results, besides putting at defiance climatic changes. In the month of Sep- 
tember we received a letter from a friend in Cecil County, Maryland, informing 
us that his crops were nearly burned from the ground by the drouth, except a 
small under-drained piece, where the vegetation was luxuriant, showing no signs 
of being at all affected. This is but one of the many accounts received, showing 
the efficiency of drainage as a protection against drouth. "But," said a farmer 
to us a few days ago, " the operation is too expensive, we cannot afford to expend 
from $36 to $50 per acre in under-draining, it would be better to move West 
and buy fertile land at half that cost." 

Five years ago, we under-drained a piece containing seven acres. The soil 
was clay and a hard pan sub-soil. This lot was wet and cold in spring, and 
some seasons could not be plowed until June 1st. The drains were opened four 
feet deep and forty feet apart. We used for parallel drains the two inch sole 
tile, and covered the joints with salt hay. The tiles cost us §12 per 1000 ; for 
these drains the entire cost was $350. The field was then in grass. The second 
year after draining, it was plowed and sub-soiled and moderately manured, and 
four acres of the seven, planted with late cabbage (a crop that could not be 
grown on the field before it was drained). 

The cabbages succeeded, and besides paying cost for manuring, culture, &c, 
returned a net profit exceeding the expense of draining the whole field. The 
profit would not have been as large if the crop had been oats, potatoes, or corn, 
but it is very certain that with any crop the increase would have been sufficient 
to warrant the under-draining. 

One year ago last September, we drained another lot containing four acres. 
The drains were three and a half to four feet deep, and forty-two feet apart, 
using two inch sole tile. The ground was loosened with a large lifting sub-soil 
plow to nearly the depth of the drains. By this means the opening of the drain 
cost only sixteen cents per rod. The cost of the work was as follows, per acre: 

Digging 62 rods of drains, at 16 cents per rod, 

1023 feet of tile, - - - 

Laying the tiles and covering with salt hay, 

Filling in drains, using plow and pair of horses, 

Miscellaneous expenses, 

$23 65 



$ 9 92 


10 


23 


1 


00 


1 


50 


1 


00 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



51 



It -will be seen by the figures that the work was performed for less than half 
what it had cost five years ago. The protracted drouth of last summer injured 
many crops to a considerable extent; this lot showed no indications of want of 
moisture; it was planted with potatoes and yielded over 200 bushels to the acre. 

Thorough drainage will not be practiced to the extent it should, until it can 
be done at an expense of less than 520 per acre. Farmers of limited means will 
not generally adopt it, until some such change takes place, and from what has 
already been done in reducing the cost, there is little doubt that this desirable 
state of things is near at hand. Already we have a tile machine, inexpensive 
and portable, and said by those who have used it, to give good satisfaction, 
making a tile of a superior quality. When such a machine is in market, if 
several farmers in a township would club together and purchase one, the tiles 
could be made at home, and at one half the expense they now are. 

In conclusion, we beg our readers to consider this matter fully, and if they 
have not heretofore been forced to improve their land by their own observations, 
to act upon the well ascertained and plainly stated profits of others; above all, 
whatever is done in under-draining, let it be done well, for it costs more to keep a 
poorly made drain in repair than to build a new one. P. T. Q. 



Drain Tile—Number per Acre. 

J. Herbert Shedd gives the following rule, in the New England Farmer, for 
calculating the number of drain-tile required for an acre : 

"In estimating, to include main drains, divide 48,000 by the distance apart in 
feet. Thus : if the drains are to be 30 feet apart 

30)48,000 

1,600 the number required. 
" If forty feet apart, 
40)48,000 



1,200 the number required. 
"The per centage of tile to be used in the main drains, varies with the length 
of the laterals and with their distances apart. The above-given rule supposes 
the laterals to be 40 feet apart, and to have an average length of about 400 feet 
each. 

'•'If it is required to know how many tiles would be used for lateral drains 
only, divide 43,560 (the number of superficial feet in an acre) by the distance 
apart Thus: for lateral drains, 35 feet apart, 

36)43,560 

1,210 the number required." 

When you know the length of a drain, provide a tile for every foot, since, 
after deducting for breakage and bad tiles, a thousand in number will just about 
lay a thousand feet in length. • 



Allele 



Guano for the Corn Crop. 

Abingdon, Va., December 10th, 1860. 
Messrs. Editors: 

My Dear Sirs, — I want to know in what quantities and what manner guano 
should be used upon corn 1 Whether it should be put in the hill with the corn 
when planted, or on the hill after the corn has come up, or sown broadcast ? 
Whether the increase of the crop is large from its use, and whether it is better 
to use it pure or mixed with ashes or gypsum, and in what proportions ? I would 
be glad also to learn whether guano is good for meadows and pastures, sown 
broadcast ? You will confer a favor by answering me in the Planter. 

Yours respectfully, John W. Johnston. 

We very cheerfully comply with the request of Mr. Johnston, and will give 
him our personal experience on the subject of his enquiry. We hope some of 
our readers will also respond. 

We have applied pure Peruvian guano mixed with equal parts (by weight) of 
plaster to corn, at the rate of 400 pounds to the acre. A deep furrow was 
opened every four feet, and the guano and plaster sowed in it — after which two 
furrows were lapped up on each side over the one containing guano. The land 
was then checked off in the opposite direction four feet, and the corn planted on 
top of the checks, so that the hills were four feet apart each way, and contained 
two stalks to the hill. The season was propitious, and the crop yielded well. At 
the same planting we applied the same quantities of guano and plaster broadcast 
to the land before breaking it up — plowed it in deeply, and had the land well 
harrowed. The corn was planted at the same distance apart each way, (four 
feet,) and the yield was supposed, by persons who saw both experiments, to be 
rather better than the first. Of this we had our doubts. We could see little if 
any difference between the two lots. 

Another experiment we tried was a most complete failure, and resulted in the 
entire loss of the cost of the guano. In this case, the corn was planted five feet 
apart one way, by three feet the other — the land was well ploughed and har- 
rowed — and the corn planted without manure. As soon as the corn was high 
enough to throw the dirt to it, we sowed one hundred pounds of unmixed Peru- 
vian guano at the sides of the hills, and lapped the dirt over it. We had a se- 
vere drought and the chinch-bug both to contend with that summer, and the corn 
consequently could not do anything. The whole field was a dead loss. 

Last summer we tried somewhat the same plan, with better success. We 
mixed guano (dissolved in sulphuric acid) with double its weight of plaster : 
sowed it at the rate of 300 lb3. of the mixture to the acre, and immediately 



1861,] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



53 



lapped two furrows on each side of the corn rows over it. A seasonable rain 
pushed the corn right along, and the field yielded four barrels (20 bushels) to 
the acre. This corn had previously been greatly damaged by drought, and we 
think would have easily doubled the yield but for that fact. 

Next season, if we live, we intend to apply 200 lbs. of Manipulated guano 
and the same quantity of plaster to each acre of corn, when we throw the dirt 
to it, and to lay the corn by with peas. Our object in doing which is to secure 
a strong growth of green vegetable matter to the soil, so as to make the guano 
applied to the corn available for a crop of wheat or oats, if the season should be 
such as to make it not available to the corn crop. Guano is so expensive as to 
render the expediency of its use exceedingly doubtful, except in such manner as 
to give the farmer another chance at it, if the crop to which it is applied should 
fail. We think this plan a safe one, as it has, so far, proved so with ourselves. 

"We think that Southern farmers must, in self-defence, use either concentrated 
or home made manure upon the corn crop, as labor is so expensive with us that 
we cannot employ force for our farms and pay their expenses with the old fash- 
ioned average number of barrels to the acre. 

We must put each acre of our corn land in proper condition to bring eight 
or ten barrels to the acre, or ice must every year become worse and worse off, by 
sinking money in the foil y of cultivating poor land without a rational prospect of 
being paid for our labor. It takes no more labor to work an acre of rich land 
than it does of poor, and while it might require more time and exertion to gather 
the crop from the former, we should at the same time have a very pleasant 
stimulant for our exertions in the shape of profit. 

With regard to manuring in the hill, we must reply that we have never tried 
it in any manner; but we know farmers who have used guano in the hill for the 
purpose of giving their corn a lively start. A tablespoonful put in the hill, and 
well mixed with the dirt upon which the corn is dropped, is a plenty for this 
purpose. 

We are opposed to mixing ashes with guano, because they are chemically in- 
compatible, and the result of such mixing is to "set free" the ammonia the 
guano contains. Jf the tv;o could be mixed in a perfectly dry condition, and be 
at once put under ground, there is no objection to using them in combination. 
We hare seen this experiment tried on wheat with profitable results. 

We have once tried the experiment of sowing guano and plaster broadcast 
upon clover, upon a limited scale. The experiment was tried during a light 
drizzling rain, and the clover was greatly improved by the application. We do 
not know positively how it would pay to sow guano broadcast over our meadows, 
but we are inclined to think that it would pay to apply it in small quantities 
mixed with plaster, occasionally to sod land, particularly if the latter was lightly 
scarified, and the top-dressing was given while the ground was moist. 

We hope, any of our agricultural friends who have had experience in these 



54 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



matters, will reply to Mr. J.'s queries, so that we may gain all possible informa- 
tion on the subject of guano, as it is a matter of great interest to farmers, and 
we should know the best means of using it economically. 



To Our Readers. 

We send copies of our present number to many persons who are not 
subscribers, and to others who have been in the habit of reading the Planter 
in by-gone years, but who are not now on our subscription list. It is 
needless to say that we shall be glad to have the influence and patronage of all 
these gentlemen, if they are inclined to give it, either on account of the good 
cause which we are trying to promote, a regard for their own benefit or for ours. 

We believe that we shall make the Planter more useful than ever to every man 
engaged in tilling the soil. We are sure that Major Gilham will be able to 
give our readers much information of a perfectly reliable character, on all chemi- 
cal and geological subjects, which it would be difficult for them to procure by in- 
vestigations conducted on their own hook. 

We promise for the Major and ourself, that we will conscientiously discharge 
the duties we have assumed, by endeavoring by all honorable means, to lay be- 
fore our readers everything we can procure of value or instruction in agriculture, 
rural, and household economy, that we will not advise others to follow plans on 
their lands, which we would be afraid to carry out on our own, and we ask every 
man who reads these lines to aid us. 

Some of our oldest subscribers are talking about discontinuing their papers on 
the ground that the general pecuniary distress of the country demands of them 
the observance of the most rigid economy. Granted, but let economy begin at 
the proper place. What would be thought of the economy of a miller who would 
not give a small sum of money to keep in proper repair the conduit of the stream 
which afforded to his mill nearly all its power, because from bad roads or con- 
fusion of plans on the farms of his neighbors, there was a temporary stoppage 
of his grist. 

These cases are similar gentlemen, for the man, who in our present enlightened 
age, attempts to make a living by tilling the soil, and who cannot afford to take 
an agricultural paper, will never have enough of liberality towards his farm, to 
keep it from going downward every year; and he cuts off the stream of know- 
ledge, thought and reflection, which keeps up to the standard of wisdom, his 
mind, which must be in a condition to work, or go to decay. 

We neither advise nor expect any man to farm literally "by the book" — but 
reading one very subject connected with the successful practice of agriculture, 
is a necessity ; and the benefits which are derived from judicious agricultural 
reading are sufficiently patent for everybody but a blind man to see. " The 
papers" present subjects for thoughts and reflection, as well as the practical ex- 
perience of thinking and acting men : they afford a channel of communication 
between the farmers, and every one who has tried but one single experiment, 



1861] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 55 

which he thinks would prove advantageous if carried out on the plantation of a 
brother farmer, owes it to his common brotherhood to make it known. If every 
man who reads an agricultural paper, will only act on this hint, we should soon 
find a rapid improvement in every one of them, and a reflex benefit would result 
to all our farms and farmers. 

We invite all friends of agriculture to make the "Planter" the medium of 
publishing their agricultural thoughts and acts. Give us a report of what you 
are about in your cattle pens, your gardens, orchards, meadows and fields. We 
shall open a column especially for enquiries, and we promise all the aid we can 
give or borrow, to accommodate, or benefit every friend who will oblige us by ac- 
cepting this invitation. 



Salutatory. 

In the December number of the Planter, its patrons are made aware of 
the fact, that with this number, I am to assume the responsible duties 
of Associate Editor. I have long been an occasional contributor to this journal, 
on various subjects connected with the applications of science to agriculture, and 
am proud to be able to say, that through this connection I have raised up for 
myself many friends in almost every quarter of the State. I am for the future, 
besides being a regular contributor, to take an active part in its editorial manage- 
ment; in the outset of my editorial career, I ask some of the indulgence and 
favor which have been extended to me as a contributor. 

The institution to which I am attached, has, by the munificent bestowal of 
funds by a few individuals — one of whom is a Virginia farmer — been enabled to 
establish a school of Agriculture, wherein we hope to train young men in those 
arts and sciences, upon which successful agriculture so much depends; and I 
have been honored with a chair in this school. Henceforth my time and labors 
are to be given to the advancement of the cause of agriculture — to building up 
this school, to aiding in building up the fabric of scientific agriculture, and to 
spreading its principles far and wide over Virginia, and the other States of the 
South. The Planter is the only journal published within the borders of Virginia, 
devoted entirely to agriculture; I connect myself with it in the hope, that through 
the combined efforts of its present accomplished Editor, Dr. Williams, myself, 
arfd the numerous friends who are now, and of others whom we hope will become 
its contributors, we may make it pre-eminently useful to our farmers, and secure 
for it such a measure of favor, as to ensure its welcome entrance into the homes 
of many thousands of them. I may remark in this connection, that through the 
enlightened liberality of the Board of Visitors of the Institute, I expect to spend 
a large part of the present year in Europe, for the purpose of studying its agri- 
culture, &c, and after my return to have the opportunity for mingling freely 
with the farmers, and for visiting various quarters of the State from time to time; 
the results of rny observations and experience, whether at home or abroad, will 
of course be made public through the pages of the Planter. 



56 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



It is not my object to discuss at this time, the various means by which the 
Planter may be improved; at the same time I cannot refrain from calling atten- 
tion to one of the most important, if not the most important of them all. It is, 
that our farmers, instead of waiting, as far too many of them do, to see what the 
Editors may have culled from other sources, or have written themselves, would 
give their friends and fellow-farmers the results of their own experience, or of 
that of others, which they know must be of more or less value to the agricultu- 
ral community. Or, if any would like to be informed upon any particular subject 
connected with their calling, let them ask for information through the pages of the 
Planter ; if either of the Editors are able to answer the queries satisfactorily, 
they will take great pleasure in doing so; if not, an appeal will be made to those 
who can. Almost every farmer, if he is an observing man, must have found 
something in his experience that is worth recording, or that might be useful if 
made public ; if not, he must have some questions to ask of those who have more 
experience than himself, he must desire some information in relation to various 
matters connected with his vocatiou. If he could meet his brother farmers at 
regular intervals, and had time to converse freely with them, he certainly would 
ask and be asked many questions ; now since this is not practicable, let him make 
the Planter his vehicle of communication between himself and the hosts of 
others who follow the same noble pursuit, and let him, with the coming in of the 
new year, resolve that the- year shall not pass without his imparting or asking in- 
formation through its pages. 

Let the Planter in this way become the common medium of communication 
between farmers, so that anything which is valuable in the practice of one, may 
become the common property of all, and (hen it will exert a revivifying influence 
upon agriculture, which will be felt wherever it circulates. 

We are entering upon a political revolution, and a commercial crisis is upon 
us ; that the agricultural, in common with the other great interests, must suffer 
more or less, there can he no doubt; let us not, however, be discouraged, let us 
rather labor on in the hope that our present difficulties may be followed by a sea- 
son of unexampled peace and prosperity, and let us all remember, that no matter 
what may be the aspect of the political horizon, we have the sure promise that, 
" while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease." 

William Gilha>'. 



Plantation Book. — We return our thanks to J. W. Randolph, Esq., for a 
copy of this book, with which we are much pleased. It is at once, an account 
book for the farm, and an efficient instructor to every farmer who may not have 
the necessary knowledge of book-keeping to be able to keep an accurate and re- 
cord of his business operations. This book supplies a real want on every planta- 
tion, and we think we are serving the interest of our friends in presenting them 
with the table of contents, which, from the value and arrangement of the subjects 
treated in it, speaks for the book all that need be said in its commendation : 



1861.] 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



57 



PLANTATION BOOK. 

Plantation and Farm Instruction, Regulation, Record, Inventory and Account 
Booh, for the use of Managers of Estates and for the better ordering and 
management of plantation and farm business in every particular. By a South- 
ern Planter. " Order is Heaven's first law." 

New edition, with additions, cap folio, price SI 50, also a larger edition for 
cotton plantations, price $2 00. Sent by mail, post paid. Published by J. W. 
Randolph, Richmond, Va., and for sale by booksellers, generally. 

This Book is by one of the best and most systematic farmers in Virginia, and 
experienced farmers have expressed the opinion that those who use it will save 
hundreds of dollars. 

CONTENTS : 



Air, .... 

Arithmetical signs, 
Books, &c, . . 

Bushel, Winchester, 
Books in Library, a list of, 
Balance account to the 31st of 

December, 
Cows, 
Cultivatiion, 
Contents of a corn crib, 
Contract with Manager, form of, 
Circle (the) and its sections, 
Cotton picked, . . .23 

English currency, or sterling money, 
Field Hands, 

Feet to the acre, number of, 
Government of the Negroes, rules 

for, . . . . 

Horses, .... 
Hogs, .... 

Heat, .... 

Instructions to Managers, 
In-door hands, 
Implements, 

Inventory of negroes. 1st of Jan., 2 
Inventory of stock and implements, 

1st of January, . . .2 

Inventory of stock and implements, 

1st of April, . . .2 

Inventory of stock and implements, 

1st of July, . . .2 

Inventory of stock and implements, 

1st of October, . . .2 

Inventory of negroes, 31st of Dec, 2 
Inventory of stock and implements, 

31st of December, . . 2 

Journal, or Daily Record, 52 

Land Marks, 

Light, .... 

List of articles received by Mana- 
ger, . . . .2 
List of clothing, tools, &c, given to 

negroes, . . . .2 



Page. 
13 

16 
10 
14 
20 



2 pag 



6 

8 
11 

9 

17 

pages 

15 

5 
12 

9 
5 
7 
13 
3 
5 
7 
pages 

pages 

pages 

pages 

pages 
pages 

pages 

pages 

12 

13 

pages 

pages 



Medicines, .... 

Map of the fields, . 

Manure tables, giving the spaces 
to the acre, 

Measuring lands, . 

Management, general, 

Mechanical powers, 

Mechanics, 

Mensuration, 

Marriages, births, and deaths of ne- 
groes, . . . 

Oxen, .... 

Plantation Management, . . 

Police, .... 

Pounds to a bushel, number of, 

Planting distances, table of, 

Physician's visits, . 

Quantity and value of products for 
the year, 

Rotation tables for the cultivation 
of crops, 3, 4, and 5 field, 

Reducing sterling to federal 
money, . 

Rural economy, 

Sheep, 

Square Measure, 

Sound, 

Statement of expenses and sales for 
the year, 

Treatment of Negreos, 

Two rules for ploughmen, 

Tariff of rates at Richmond, Va., 
commissions, storage and for- 
warding, . . , 

United States currency, or federal 
money. .... 

Washington's letter to his steward, 
extract, . 

Weight of materials, 

Weights and measures, 

Weight of each bale of cotton 

Yards to the acre, number of, 



Page. 
10 
11 

12 
12 

8 
14 
15 
17 

1 page 

6 

5 

5 

11 

13 

1 page 

1 page 

10 

15 
15 
17 
12 
13 

6 pages 

4 

10 



19 
15 



13 

15 

1 page 

12 



58 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 



Pamphlets &ECEIYED.— Journal of Transactions of U. S. Agricultural 
Society. Bcnj. Perlcy Poore, Secretary. 

Journal of Transactions of A r cw York State Agricultural Society. Col. B. 
P. Johnson, Secretary. 

De Bow's Review. This excellent Southern magazine has lost nothing of its 
interest. It is a work which has always well deserved the support of every 
Southern man, and we sincerely hope its editor may continue to receive the en- 
couragement and support of all our citizens, for whose benefit he has labored so 
zealously and efficiently. 



We transfer to our columns, from De Bote's Review, the following article. 
The present time is a suitable one for us again to impress upon our readers, the 
importance of encouraging, by all honorable means, our home industry, in evert/ 
department. We do not have to advance into the arena of politics to do this, or 
to appeal to sectional prejudice or passion; but we urge it upon every good 
citizen, as a duty he owes to himself and his neighbor, to try, with all his might, 
to build up the commercial, agricultural, and mechanical resources of our own 
section of country, that in all our wants we may be independent of any supply 
from any other source. The man who faithfully discharges all his duties to his 
own family, is sure to prove a valuable, reliable, and agreeable neighbor. 

Let those whose charity and patronage have been bestowed on places far from 
home, read and consider. 

Southern Patronage to Southern Imports and Domestic Industry. 

Our indifference to the encouragement of domestic industry, and the ease 
with which our people may be induced to purchase inferior articles brought 
from a distance to compete with the honestly-made home article, cannot too often 
be repeated, and we therefore trust that even small matters may be set forth as 
profitable examples. As straws indicate the direction of the wind, so may small 
things serve to indicate the course which trade and custom are drifting us, and 
the body economic, commercial, and body politic of the whole South. 

What we want now, and have always wanted, is a broadcast public sentiment, 
which shall reach every mind and stimulate every bosom to action — not weighin? 
the little inconveniences and slight pecuniary considerations in the balance with 
our permanent good. The public mind must be imbued with the importance of 
living more within ourselves, and anything that is calculated to move public 
sentiment in that direction, we trust will be excused, even if we should descend 
to what might be termed small potatoes. 

Some twelve years ago, when manufacturing was the rage in South Carolina, 
we purchased from a neighbor a home-made well-bucket. The maker had a 
high reputation in that line of business, and supplied the country for many miles 
around, and it was the general opinion that his buckets would last from twelve 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 59 



to fifteen years, and some even affirmed that they had been used for twenty years 
without replacing. The bucket made for us in 1847, was in use about eleven 
years, when it suddenly gave way. As our neighbor did not keep them ready 
made, a member of our family went to town and purchased a Yankee made 
bucket, which did not last a year. We went in person to endeavor to procure 
a home-made one, but looked in vain over Augusta, and through the stores of a 
village close by. We inquired of a prominent merchant, why he did not keep 
a supply of our neighbor's well-made buckets, instead of the Northern trash he 
offered us. His reply was, that he could make nothing on them; and, besides, 
they would never icear out. Not being able to do without water, we abandoned 
the rule of action we are recommending, and purchased a Northern-made bucket, 
highly praised by the merchant, but not guaranteed. He advised that it should 
be filled with water and left to soak for a day and night, lest it might fall to 
pieces; and he might, with great propriety, have extended the caution to keep 
water in it all the time, and not expose it to the sun. Feeling quite confident 
that the last purchase was no better than the one which had just fallen to pieces, 
another of domestic make was immediately ordered, to be held in reserve. 

Now, here is an example which strikingly sets forth our apathy in regard to 
patronizing our own people and encouraging home industry. See this honest, 
hard-working South Carolina cooper, who, by diligent application, has earned 
an enviable fame in his line by the production of faithfully made and cheap 
articles. He is poor, and for want of patronage, not half his time employed at 
bis trade, from the fact that it is to the interest of the trader that he should 
remain idle; and it is a convenience and a seeming economy to the unthrifty man 
to pay a dollar every year for a new, cheap Yankee bucket, rather than to employ 
this industrious mechanic to supply a good home-made article at a dollar and a 
half, which will last half a life-time. This certainly manifests an improvident) 
careless and wasteful spirit, that patrlrjtUm (if not our own interests) ought to 
prompt every individual to try and overcome. We remember the time when it 
was a common thing to see our merchants trading with country coopers for their 
cart loads of home-made ware — tubs, pails, churns, &c., manufactured of the best 
material — well-seasoned juniper or cedar. Rut now such a sight is rarely seen, 
the home-made article being obliged to stand out of the way and make room for 
the better finished, finer looking woodenware of the North. 

Laudable efforts have been made at the South, in various places, particularly in 
Charleston, Columbia, and Augusta, to manufacture such articles by machinery; 
but the hot opposition from Yankeedom, and the never-ceasing desire of that 
people to cheapen goods and make fortunes by the profits, before the cheat is 
detected, together with our own indifference about being well-served, has driven 
those Southern manufactures out of the market, making, in most instances, a 
sacrifice of the entire capital so invested. And now we are over-run with Yankee 
buckets, tubs, etc., painted inside and out, to hide the sappy, inferior material 
they are made of. Northern work of this kind, polished and painted up, may be 



60 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



seen in every village or country shop, and composes part of the household furni- 
ture of every mansion and cottage throughout the South. If you engage a mason 
to build a chimney, the first preliminary is to buy half a dozen Yankee blue- 
painted buckets, to carry water and mortar in, and if they hold together till the 
job is done, they will scarcely be worth preserving to be used on another job. 

If we break a carriage tongue, instead of going to the woods and hewing out 
a tough piece of wood and working it into shape, to save trouble, we send to 
town and get one ready shaped, worked so by a labourer in the State of Maine. 

If we break a buggy-shaft, we find it more convenient to apply to the same 
source for a pair already reduced to shape, if not finished, painted and trimmed 
ready for use. If you chide a man with a lack of patriotism in purchasing such 
articles of foreign make, he will tell you at once that if he takes his vehicle to 
the nearest village carriage-maker, the result will be the same, for he imports his 
carriage-tongues, buggy-shafts, and, indeed, every part is made at the North, 
except putting together, painting and trimming. 

It is not an unusual thing for our wagon-makers to import their hubs already 
morticed ; and, in some instances, the fellies and spokes. Even our timber log- 
carts, in many cases, are partially made at the North. Nothing is more common 
now, than to see at our store doors, hubs for log-cart wheels, which are often 
carried fifty miles into the country, after having travelled perhaps a thousand 
miles from the maker's hands, while it would be easier for the cart-builder to get 
the wood and turn them, than to go ten miles for them. 

This all results from the want of home patronage, of which wagon and cart- 
makers get so little, that they cannot afford to keep the materials on hand; and 
when a job does come, to be done in haste, the only way for him to get seasoned 
bubs, fellies, and spokes (if not axles and tongues), is to post off to the nearest 
town, and purchase those of Yankee make. 

The question now arises, how are we to cure this growing evil ? It can be 
accomplished in no other way, than by liberal encouragement and patronage of 
all varieties of domestic industry. All can see, in a crisis like the present, that 
our entire dependence on others for the commonest necessaries in use, is a national 
evil. 

If we turn from the Yankees and rely on Europe, for the supplies we ought 
to furnisb for ourselves, can we reasonably look for a better state of things ? It 
is well known to the mercantile world, that all nations reserve the best goods for 
home consumption, and send away the refuse; and we need not flatter ourselves 
that we shall fare better in the hands of English traders than those of other 
countries supplied by that nation. 

The Yankees are not the only people who make good articles for home use, 
and manufacture trasb expressly for export. Englishmen wear better broadcloth 
than is sent to this country. Good judges can procure the best English cloth, 
but that sent out here for general traffic is of the most inferior quality, highly 
finished, but not such as would be offered in the English market for home use. 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 61 

The English also excel the Yankees in cheating, in the manufacture of cotton 
goods and hardware. They make good, substantial cottons for home use, but 
when they are to be exported there are deceptions practised, which few men here 
are aware of, and which some would hardly credit. Their consummate skill 
enables them to work up cotton without fibre. From the commonest short Ame- 
rican cotton mixed with East India, together with card waste, they make a hand- 
some looking article of shirting, sheeting and drills, and are not content with 
using poor cotton, but resort to the artifice of filling the yarn with porcelain clay 
to the amount of 20 to 30 per cent.' of its weight. 

The dressing of yarn for the loom in England is a business separate from the 
manufacture of the yarn and wearing it into cloth. 

The spinner, when he sends a ton of yarn to the dresser, contracts to have it 
returned with the weight increased a quarter or a third of a ton. By the aid of 
steam and machinery made for the purpose, clay can be forced into the fibre of 
the thread, and so completely incorporated with it, as to remain while it is pass- 
ing through the loom into cloth. 

This may seem incredible to some, but it is nevertheless true. We had it from 
an extensive English manufacturer himself, who made no secret of it, and the 
process has also been witnessed by one nearly connected with us, while on a tour 
of inspection in England and France. The clay used is similar to that which 
abounds in our chalk-hills, and is finely pulverized and mixed with the sizing. 
Still the English are not satisfied with clay, but are now experimenting, and con- 
fidently expect to mature a plan, by which white sand maybe reduced to a liquid, 
and used for sizing and weighing yarn. If they succeed, the weight may be 
increased fifty per cent., and stand the process of washing. 

All dealers are aware of the impositions practised on us by Germany in hard- 
ware, fire-arms, watches, toys, &c, which are all the merest trash, made to sell, 
not to use. England has for many years been cheapening her articles of hard- 
ware, until she has come down to nearly a level with Germany in the manufac- 
ture of cheap hardware, cutlery, and fancy goods, to administer to the taste of 
the American people for cheap articles. 

There are large towns in England engaged wholly in manufacturing goods for 
America and other foreign countries ; while other towns employ a different class 
of mechanics to make for home consumption. 

Sheffield, for instance, makes plated ware for home use ; Birmingham makes 
a cheaper article for export. 

If you wish to purchase a watch from a London jeweller, he will ask you fifty 
or sixty guineas, for what an American will expect to purchase here for a hun- 
dred or a hundred and fifty dollars. It is much the same in every other branch 
of business. An article made to sell in England for a dollar and a half, must be 
made so much inferior and cheaper, as to enable the American consumer to sup- 
ply himself at a dollar, after government duties and other expenses are paid ; 



82 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [January 

with an English or German manufacturer anything is good enough for the Ame- 
rican market. 

It is fortunate for us that the Northern and Eastern people have embarked in 
manufacturing. For although they cheat us of the South in many ways, there 
are various articles made by them far superior to those imported. In many arti- 
cles in the hardware line, the American article has nearly driven out the Euro- 
pean altogether. The Yankees excel in the manufacture of cross-cut, mill, and 
circular saws, axes, hatchets, planes and plane-irons, knob-locks and latches, 
brass and iron hinges, wood-screws, hammers", chisels, augers, gimlets, drawing- 
knives, nails and spikes, brads and tacks, shovels and spades, pitch-forks, rifles, 
pistols and swords, hoes of the finer kind, pitch and grubbing hoes, scythes, 
mathematical instruments, surveyor's compasses, theodolites, scales and weights, 
coffee and corn mills, andirons and fenders, shovels and tongs, cast-iron hollow 
ware, frying pans, besides a thousand other things in the hardware line, and a 
multitude of articles in the dry-goods trade, amounting to millions of dollars per 
annum, which we do not make, and which they supply cheaper than they can be 
imported. 

We mention these facts in order to show that non-intercourse with the North- 
ern States is impracticable, and will not be our true policy. But while we use 
every possible effort to diversify industry, and promote the growth of commerce 
and manufactures at the South, we should continue to buy what we cannot make 
of ourselves, from those who purchase from us, and from the people who will 
serve us with the best and cheapest article. 

Every Southerner should feel the importance of putting his own shoulder to 
the wheel of progress in the right direction, and give us his help in creating 
such a change in our habits and sentiments, as will ultimately fill all our mer- 
cantile and trading channels with Southern men. Let our politicians and fire- 
eaters turn their swords (if not into ploughshares) into yard-sticks and distaffs, 
and enter the field of domestic industry prepared to fight against our worst 
enemy — Northern industry and commercial enterprise. 

Show Brother Jonathan that we have changed our tactics, and that, in future, 
we are to meet him in battle array — in the great field of commerce and home 
industry, where we intend to fight to the death against every attempt at usurpa- 
tion. This, and this alone, will be the means of rendering us independent of 
the North, and secure us against their further crusades in the cause of emanci- 
pation. A strong demonstration in that direction would cause our Yankee brother 
to put on a longer face than was ever produced by the most heart-rending and 
fabulous stories of negro wrongs and Southern cruelty. 

When the anvil and the loom begin to slacken their motion, and lose their 
exhilarating influence, for the want of Southern patronage, he will wake up, and 
probably discover that the colored gentlemen, shoe-blacks, pets, paupers, and 
vagabonds, collectively, are nothing less than a common nuisance, and will at last 
prove to be a blight on Yankee prosperity. 



1861.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 63 

New York and Philadelphia will find, too, that their Ethiopian philanthropy 
has been wasted in the wrong direction ; that their degraded, vicious, and help- 
less black population would be much happier and better off in the cotton fields 
of the South, under Christian masters, where the lines are so distinctly drawn 
between the two races, as to leave no heartburning aspirations, or cause of dis- 
turbance to (which we believe) the most happy state of society that can exist, 
where the superior and inferior races inhabit the same country. 

" Truth is mighty and will prevail." This is the anchor of our hope. But 
while we place our reliance on the justice of the world, let us not forget that in 
order to secure our independence and safety, our watchword must in future be — 
diversified labor and home patronage to domestic industry. 

(to be continued.) 



Cultivate the Basket Willow. 

The cultivation of willows has been a subject of much ridicule in this country 
for a few years past; but when it is known to what extent they are imported into 
this country, the immense quantity grown and used in the old countries, and the 
great variety of uses to which they can be applied, and especially since it has 
been proven that from tico to three hundred dollars per acre can be realized from 
their cultivation, ridicule has given way to facts, and plantations are being started 
throughout the country. Some who have attempted to grow willows have failed 
to make it profitable, but such failures are caused by a lack of knowledge as to 
the proper manner of cultivating and preparing them for market. 

It is but a few years since anything was known of their cultivation in this 
country. A few men started the business on a small scale, merely as an experi- 
ment, and when they had proved that the best French Osiers would thrive in 
this country, and that a very large profit could be realized from their growth, 
they published this information, stating the great profit of their cultivation, and 
the advantage of growing them in this country instead of importing. Thereupon 
many rushed into the business — some quite extensively — without any knowledge 
of the different varieties of the osier, or of their cultivation and preparation for 
market. 

In this country, as it was once the case in England, ash and oak baskets are 
much in use. But the time is fast approaching when willow baskets will drive 
them out of the market. In England, formerly, all light goods were packed, 
for transportation, in lie;ht boxes, and in mats, and so were vegetables. Now 
baskets are in universal use, except for goods that will be injured by getting wet. 
Willow package baskets are in use for almost every purpose of transportation, 
by farmer.?, gardeners, wholesale dealers of all kinds, and by all classes in the 
community, for every possible purpose. 

The cultivation of willow i3 not difficult nor expensive, if properly understood. 
The first thing necessary, is to choose a proper piece of land, which should be 
rich and moist, but not wet. Many suppose that willows require a wet place or 



64 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[January 



they will not thrive, but it is not so. If you will notice where native willows 
thrive best, you will find it is not in wet places, but close to the banks of some 
stream where the land is always icdl drained, but never suffers from drouth. 
Consequently, the best land for a willow plantation is rich alluvial interval, that 
is flowed occasionally ; or a mucky swamp, naturally moist, but well drained. If 
the land is naturally rich, it should have a liberal dressing of manure, which 
should be spread on and plowed under as deep as possible, then harrow and fit it 
as you would a garden. There is no danger of doing it too well, as you have it 
to do but once, and it will affect the crop for years. 

When the land is prepared, mark it off as you would for corn, or use a line to 
set by, and set the cuttings in rows 2 1 feet apart, and about one foot apart in 
rows; stick them perpendicular, and leave but one or two buds above the ground. 
If it is green sward, use an iron spindle to make a hole for them. On mellow 
land, it is no more work to set an acre of willows than to plant an acre of pota- 
toes, but it is very important that it be well done, as they are not set over every 
spring, and if badly started they will never produce a full crop. 

They should be cultivated the first year, so as to prevent all grass and weeds 
from growing among them, and keep the ground loose, and the second year until 
they get up so as to shade the ground and not be injured by working among them. 

Cuttings should be procured in the winter, and set as early in the spring as 
the ground can be prepared. — Scientific Artisan. 



Liquid Glue. 

The following recipe, the discovery of a French chemist, is selling about the 
country as a secret at various prices from one to five dollars. It is a handy and 
valuable composition as it does not gelatinize nor undergo putrefaction and 
fermentation and become offensive, and can be used cold for all necessary pur- 
poses of glue in making or mending furniture or broken vessels that are not ex- 
posed to water. 

In a wide mouthed bottle dissolve eight ounces of best glue in a half pint 
of water, by setting it in a vessel of Water and heating it till dissolved. Then 
add slowly constantly stirring two and a half ounces of strong aquafortis 
(nitric acid.) 

Keep it well corked and it will be ready for use. This is the " Celebrated 
Prepared Glue," of which we hear so much. — U. S. Journal. 



Sally Ltjnn. — Three ounces melted butter, a half tea-cupful sugar, one beaten 
egg, yeast, a pint of milk alternately with the flour, making a batter too thick 
to pour. Put the mixture into two Turk's Heads, and keep them covered and 
warm until light, then bake one hour.