CULTIVATION OF WHEAT-CORN-BARLEY.

THE following is the manner in which Mr. Asaph Andrews, of Shrewsbury, Mass., prepares his land for cultivation. He turns his grass land in November. Harrows fine; applies twenty loads of green manure, which is incorporated with the soil; in the spring he ploughs with a one-horse plough about four inches deep. He plants corn, manuring with one shovel full in each hill; he plants Dutton from selected ears. This crop for several years amounted to from seventy-five to ninety bushels of shelled corn per acre; in the year 1851 he raised 200 bushels on 24 acres. The spring following the corn crop, he splits the hills with a one-horse plough, harrows with a bush harrow, and then sows his land with Italian spring wheat; the quantity is two bushels per acre, and an equal quantity of salt upon the land. He prepares the seed by soaking it in water. If the foul seed does not rise at first, he applies salt to the water, which will cause it to rise; after soaking the seed he places it in a half-hogshead, and then sifts on ashes, mixing them well together; the seed will then be with the ashes about twice the natural size. Sows immediately. His crop of wheat has averaged thirty bushels per acre for the past eight years; one year he raised 44 bushels per acre It is his custom to sow salt with all kinds of spring grain. The second year he seeds to grass. Occasionally he has to plough and seed the second. time, owing to the seed not taking well. His land lies in grass six years; he plants 2 and seeds 24 acres yearly. Of barley, he raised one season 55 bushels per acre.

He asks a comparison with any farmer in the State in regard to the amount of stock kept on an equal number of acres of improved land.

Mr. Andrews considers the salt and ashes about equal for stiffening the

straw.

VEGETATION OF THE FROZEN REGIONS.

THE following extract is from Seaman's "Botany of the voyage of H. M. ship Herald, under the command of Capt. Kellett," in search for Sir John Franklin. The account of the remarkable phenomena exhibited in those icy regions, will be found new and exceedingly interesting:

"The soil is always frozen, and merely thaws during the summer a few feet below the surface. But the thawing is by no means uniform. In peat it extends not more than two feet, while in other formations, especially in sand or gravel, the ground is free from frost to the depth of nearly a fathom, showing that sand is a better conductor of heat than peat or clay, and corroborating the observation of the accurate J. D. Hooker, who, after a series of experiments in India, arrived at the same conclusion. The roots of the plants, even those of the shrubs and trees, do not penetrate into the frozen subsoil. On reaching it, they recoil as if they touched upon a rock, through which no passage could be forced.

"It may be surprising to behold a vegetation flourishing under such circumstances, existing independent, it would seem, of terrestrial heat. But surprise is changed into amazement, on visiting Kotzebue Sound, where, on the tops of icebergs, herbs and shrubs are thriving with a luxuriance only equalled in more favored climes. There, from Elephant to Eshholtz Point, is a series of cliffs from seventy to ninty feet high, which present some striking

illustrations of the manner in which Arctic plants grow. Three distinct layers compose these cliffs. The lower, as far as it can be seen above the ground, is ice, and from twenty to fifty feet high. The central is clay, varying in thickness from two to twenty feet, and being intermingled with remains of fossil elephants, horses, deer and musk oxen. The clay is covered by peat, the third layer, bearing the vegetation, to which it owes its existence. Every year, during July, August and September, masses of ice melt, by which the uppermost layers are deprived of support and tumble down. A complete chaos is thus created. Ice, plants, bones, peat and clay are mixed in the most disorderly manner. It is hardly possible to imagine a more grotesque aspect. Here are seen pieces still covered with lichens and mosses, there a shoal of earth with bunches of willows; at one place a lump of clay with senecios and polygonums, at another the remnants of the mammoth, tufts of hair and other substances which are evidently decomposed animal matter. The foot frequently stumbles over osteological remains, some elephant's tusks measuring as much as twelve feet in length, and weighing more than two hundred and forty pounds. Nor is the formation confined to Eshholtz Bay. It is observed in various parts of Kotzebue Sound, on the river Buckland, and in other localities, making it probable that a great portion of North America is under a solid mass of ice. With such facts before us, we acknowledge that terrestrial heat exercises but a limited and indirect influence upon vegetable life, and that to the solar rays we are mainly indebted for the existence of those forms which clothe with verdure the surface of our planet.

"A curious fact is stated respecting the condition of the vegetable world during the long days of the Arctic summer. Although the sun never sets while it lasts, plants make no mistake about the time when, if it be not night, it ought to be; but regularly, as the evening hours approach, and when a midnight sun is several degrees above the horizon, droop their leaves, and sleep even as they do at sunset in more favored climes. 'If man,' observes Mr. Seaman, 'should ever reach the Pole, and be undecided which way to turn, when his compass has become sluggish, his time-piece out of order, the plants which he may happen to meet will show him the way. Their sleeping leaves will tell him that midnight is at hand, and at that time the sun is standing in the north.'"

IRISH POTATOS FROM SLIPS.

COLONEL WILLIAM MURRAY, of Catoosa Springs, Walker county, Georgia, gives the following account of his method of growing potatoes from slips. We find it in the Western Horticultural Review:

Mix two bushels of charcoal with one bushel of air-slacked lime for every fifty bushels of potatoes, and sprinkle the mixture through the potatoes immediately after moving them from the field. In this way you may keep them perfectly sound until the spring.

Inasmuch as seed potatoes are with difficulty obtained at any price, I have been planting the Irish potato for the last three years by drawing the slips, and find that they produce in this way quite as well as the yam potato. One bushel of Irish potatoes planted in this way will produce more than two bushels planted from the seed. Bed them as you do the yam, draw the slip, open a wide furrow with the plough, and plant them in it on the horizontal plan, as you do grape cuttings, leaving from two to four inches of the top out of the ground.

Mr. Cobbett, in an essay on the Irish potato crop, written in 1816, predicts that it will eventually fail. To this opinion we dissent. The Irish potato is a native of America, where it grows wild, and was transplanted in Europe, where it became an indispensable article of food, and where it has been cultivated with great success under forced culture. Neither is the Irish potato a native of the Northern States. And yet we have been hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Yankees until we have forgotten when to dig our own potatoes or how to save them. Necessity now forces us to change our system of agriculture. The original stock of potatoes has become exhausted. We must renew it. Draw from your present crop slips or vines when from eight to ten inches long; plant as before described, in good loose free soil; gather your potato apples or balls, and you will get a fresh start. By drawing the slips, you get clear of the parent potato which is diseased. The potato apple will probably produce several kinds of potatoes, aud a premium of $100 by the Southern Central Agricultural Society would probably bring the energy of our farmers to bear on the subject, and bring to notice new and improved varieties. I am satisfied that our people do not appreciate the value and importance of seed raised on our own soil in our own climate. The Cincinnati Society has offered a premium for the best seedling strawberry.

I live in a grape-growing, corn-raising and vegetable and fruit country, in sight of the Catoosa Springs, where my experiments may be seen by calling.

SWEET POTATOES.

A correspondent of the Farmer and Planter cultivates this root as follows: MESSRS EDITORS:---Agreeable to your request in the May number of the Farmer and Planter, I now take my pen to give you my small experiment in the planting and culture of the sweet potato. You gave us in that number the experience (or practice) of Mr. James T. Ferguson, which is very good, but it is old-fashioned. The ridge is the present mode here some very large and some small, and in various ways. I have for the last few years planted the easiest and cheapest way I have ever seen practised, and have succeeded as well as by any other mode. I break my land about eight inches deep in the winter, then manure, broad-cast, just before planting. I plant in the first part of April— laying off my rows four feet wide, then throw up in a bed, with a good turning plough, four more furrows, just as I would to plant cotton that distance. I then cut the potatoes in pieces to prevent them from growing, and to plant further. I chop with a hoe about eighteen inches apart; if I doubt the potatoes coming up well, I put two pieces in each hole, then draw a hoe full of earth on them. I draw no earth with a hoe to make a bed until the last working, which I do when the vines will nearly cover the earth. After planting I plough and hoe just as I do cotton, until the last working, when I use the turning plough again, and draw the earth with the hoe to the roots of the vines. Potatoes are not more troublesome to tend than cotton when cultivated in this way, and not more than half the labor that is required to plant in hills, which is a great saving in work, not only in cultivation, but also in digging. This operation may be performed with the plough, instead of the hoe, if you desire. I do a part of my digging with the plough.

In addition, I consider the potato crop, if well managed, the most profitable of any other that I am acquainted with the culture of; and yet its cultivation is but little practised, or on a very small scale, in proportion to its

importance, by most persons, myself not excepted--its great value not being properly appreciated. The two past years have not been surpassed under my knowledge for the extreme scarcity by drought. Yet under such extremes, I gathered from about three eighths of an acre of land, at the time of digging and housing potatoes, about sixty bushels each year, which were worth as many dollars; equal to one hundred and sixty dollars per acre, It is astonishing that it should take us so long to learn when our opportunities are so great, yet it has been so. An aged gentleman informed me a few weeks since that he had gathered about three hundred bushels from one acre.

AMMONI A-GUANO.

By the process of fermentation sugar is changed to alcohol and carbonic acid, and the alcohol is changed to acetic acid, the mass of the liquid forming vinegar: then comes the last stage, the putrefactive, in which the elements form still other combinations, or are set free as gases, uncombined. Such is the process carried on within the interior of the manure-heap. Chemical changes on the outer surface of the pile are of limited extent. Fermentation requires an atmosphere of at least 60°, and a due proportion of water. Hence the comparatively dry exterior of such a mass is subject to little change except evaporation; within, chemical agencies are active.

Who has not observed the ammonia of a horse-stable? Ammonia is formed by combining, in certain proportions, hydrogen and nitrogen. It is found in all animal matter, and in the solid and liquid excretia of our domestic animals. It is also evolved from all fermenting animal or vegetable matter. "If a current of moist air be made to pass over red-hot charcoal, carbonic acid and ammonia are simultaneously formed. This is, in reality, only a repetition, in another form, of what takes place when vegetable matter decays, or iron rusts, in moist air. The carbon, in one case, and the iron, in the other, decompose the watery vapor in the air, and combine with its oxygen, while, at the instant of its liberation, the hydrogen of the water combines with the nitrogen of the air, and forms ammonia."

Ammonia is essential to the growth of plants. An acre of turnips, radishes, cabbages, &c., according to Mr. Brown, often carries off 100 lbs., although 30 lbs. will supply an acre of most cultivated crops.

It is the presence of ammonia in excess which destroys plants, in the field or in the house, when they are too highly enriched by the Peruvian guano. This may probably be explained by the supposition that, in the decomposition of the guano, an excess of nitric acid, (aqua fortis,) composed of nitrogen and oxygen, is produced. Another injurious result follows such a use of any fertilizer, inasmuch as feeding either plants or animals to excess occasions repletion, and necessarily tends to disease.

But

The use of guano is becoming very common. It is so portable, so perfectly adapted to any soil and to any crop, and so important in compensating for a deficiency of stable manure, that it must soon come into universal use. how absurd to waste the ammonia of your own stable, and then purchase from abroad the same substance, in the form of imported or prepared manures!

Why are these fertilizers, guano, &c., so useful? The answer may be made obvious to a mere glance of the eye. It is wonderful to observe how exactly all food is adapted to nourish that for which it is provided, whether

for animals or for plants. Thus the blood of the human species is almost precisely the same in substance with the flesh of animals, and this with the food nature provides for them.

In the following table, we begin with the food of plants, and next follows that of animals, hay, &c., and afterwards flesh and blood of our own species. Nothing shows more clearly the wonderful differences produced by slight variations in the proportions of the elements of different substances:

NOTE. The first column, "animal manure," was the result of an experiment in France upon a large quantity. The quality of animal mewares is modified by the kind of food the animal is fed upon

Here then is the whole story. With land and crops, just as with our own bodies, use wastes the elements which compose it. The land loses the very things that are needed for crops, inasmuch as the loss is occasioned by producing crops. These elements are furnished by manures; and the process of furnishing them is just as exactly a supply of raw material, out of which goods are manufactured, as when we furnish cotton and wool to the manufacturer of sheetings and broadcloths. The spinning and weaving is done by mother earth; and partly, at least, by the use of those chemical agencies which the Creator of the earth has put within her reach.

FOR THE PLOUGH, THE LOOM, AND THE ANVIL,

PEACH TREES.

BY HON. R. B. HUBBARD.

YOUR correspondent "H. C. N." finds fault with my inductions touching the matter of peach trees.

I did not intend to convey the idea that I was entirely satisfied with my own deductions. I stated some faets, which had come under my own observation, and by way of inquiry, inserted some inferences which it seemed to me might naturally be drawn therefrom.

The statements of "H. C. N." seem to me rather to strengthen my position. He says that like does not produce like in the peach, except in “the common sorts, which are generally quito small." I would not propagate these "common sorts;" but if it be true that they may be propagated from the stone, as I maintain and your correspondent admits, then my position is tenable. I do not propose the propagation of budded fruit wholly nor mainly. There is no difficulty in obtaining seedlings which, by cultivation, will equal the choicest varieties of fruit now known. These varieties were, in fact, all thus obtained.