Lord Cockburn was seated one day on the hillside of Bonally with a Scotch | very rich? shepherd, and observing the sheep reposing in the coldest situation, he observed to him, "John, if I were a sheep I would lie on the other side of the hill." The shepherd answered, “Ay, my lord, but if ye had been a sheep ye wad have had mair sense."

FARM HINTS.

OIL cakes, that is cotton and linseed meal, when fed to animals, yield the richest manure, since they contain the largest amount of nitrogen and phosphoric acid, with a considerable amount of potash. Bran, brewer's grains, and beans, pease, etc., come next. Clover hay gives a richer manure than the cereal grains, while English hay comes below them. Potatoes are inferior to mangolds and swedes in manurial value. The manure from straw fed to animals is the poorest in quality, though bean and pea straw is better than the straw of grains.

A cow is generally in full milk from the second to the seventh week after calving; after this time the milk falls off slowly in quantity, but improves in quality. A separation of cream takes place in the udder. The milk first drawn is poor in fat, but this increases as the milking proceeds till the last drawn contains two or three times as much fat as the first drawn. The milk of old cows is probably poorer than that of young ones.

FEEDING salt to an animal does not assist digestion, but it increases the appetite. If saline constituents or sodium salts are deficient in the food, it supplies the blood with a necessary constituent. These salts are rather abundant in mangolds, but small in quantity in hay. They are wanting in potatoes and generally wanting in all kinds of grain.

THE digestibility of fodder plants is determined chiefly by their age; all the constituents of a young plant are more digestible than in the same plant of greater age. The superior fattening quality of a pasture as compared with that of the hay made from it, is due to the fact that on land constantly grazed, the animal is fed entirely on young herbage, while hay will usually consist of plants fully grown.

FORAGE Crops do not diminish in digestibility by being made into hay, if the hay is properly cured in good weather. But many of the finer parts of the plant, like the tender leaves of the clover, will be lost by rough treatment, while the soluble matter will be washed out by exposure to rain, and this decreases the digestibility. Hay seems to lose some of its digestibility by keeping.

CORN will shrink in weight from the time it ripens, say early in October, to the first of March, fully twenty per cent. Some varieties will shrink more and some less. From November to the next summer it will shrink in bulk, on an average, about eighteen per cent. If a farmer, therefore, has corn to sell he will do better to sell it early. If he has to buy, old corn, at a dollar a bushel, will be cheaper than new corn at eighty cents.

No New England farmer who plans the rations for his cattle without reference to the quality of fertilizer they are to produce from such rations, can be regarded as a skilful feeder of stock. By the feeding of rich nitrogenous foods, like cotton-seed and linseed meal, you get the costly nitrogen in the manure at a merely nominal sum, and so you can afford to ignore it in buying fertilizers, and look only for phosphates and potash.

WHY don't you sow more clover? Both science and practice dictate the more frequent use of clover as a green crop to be ploughed in for the use of subsequent crops. It is not a very expensive mode of fertilizing land. So let us try it, and do it thoroughly. Use plaster freely to induce a heavy growth, and then resist the temptation to cut and cure the crop for hay, plough it in when in full bloom, and follow it with

THE roots of corn and other plants extend out to great distances. The common impression is that the roots of trees are as long as the branches, but in fact they are much longer. Most trees throw out roots on each side as long as the entire height of the tree, and often to a much greater distance. The roots of beans in four weeks from planting, and when the plants were only five inches high, had extended a foot and a half from the stem. The roots of corn, in early summer, before the plants were six inches high, were found to have horizontal roots a foot in length, making a circle two feet in diameter, or four times the height of the plants. When the corn had reached twelve inches, the roots had met between the three-feet rows. Long before the ears form, the whole ground between the rows is occupied with the long, slender, fibrous roots. The lesson is obvious. Never break them by using the plough. Use a cultivator or horse-hoe, and "draw it mild;" that is, cultivate shallow and very carefully, the oftener the better, but always shallow. Every fibre you break injures the plant

and lowers its vitality.

WHEN you select corn for seed, have an "ideal ear" in mind. Let it be an ear medium in size and diameter, the kernels deep, the cob small at the butt, holding its bigness towards the point till very near the tapering off. It should be capped over, and the kernels should hold their size towards the point, and at the butt run out straight and not crinkle. It will pay to look long for such an ear. Study its past history also. It must come from a prolific ancestry. We ought to know its parents, and breed it with all the care we take to get the choicest stock. The best seed will yield, without manure, more than inferior seed with it, and the best seed will yield, in the same circumstances, double the quantity of the inferior. Why shouldn't plants have as strong a hereditary character as animals ?

SOME folks think that late corn, late potatoes, or other late crops, are to be planted later than the early kinds, forgetting that the precise meaning of the term late, as applied to garden or farm crops, is that they have a longer period of growth than the early kinds. This is a mistake. The late Rose potato should be planted at about the same time as the early Rose, the Evergreen corn as soon as the Early Concord, the Peachblow as early as the Snowflake. If you put off planting the late varieties till all the others are in the ground you do them injustice; you do not give them time for their full growth, and the result is an immature growth and an inferior yield.

LATE potatoes ought to be planted deep. That is the way to encourage a large growth of roots, and these give you a strong growth of tops, or great vigor to the plants, and assist the formation of tubers. Six or even eight inches is none too much for late kinds especially, and that gives them abundant ground to forage in. Deep planting is the best protection against drought. If all the potatoes in this State the last season had been planted at least six inches deep instead of two, they would have yielded many thousand bushels more than they did. Deep planting would have saved the crop.

THE least expensive way to keep up and increase the fertility of our farms is the purchase of rich manure-making cattle-foods, and the next best way is, perhaps, the free use of chemical fertilizers. If good animals are kept and properly fed, the first method is the cheaper, especially if the stock is of a kind to mature young. It is the early beef that is the cheap beef, and cheap beef means cheap manure, cheap manure, cheap crops. With good stock and plenty of it any farmer can afford to buy linseed and cotton-seed meal and to feed them freely.

THE rain, hail, and snow that fall upon the surface of the earth hold in solution more or less of the gases of the atmosphere. The rains that fall in the country, upon our farms hold nitrogen and oxygen chiefly, with a small quantity of carbonic acid, and a still less quantity of carbonate of ammonium. They also hold some solid substanceschlorides, sulphates and nitrates of sodium, calcium, and ammonium in solution, while particles of dust, soot, etc., are held mechanically, and it is these last that give to rain-water its dirty appearance. The air of large towns is much richer in ammonia than that of the country. In northern latitudes southerly winds are richer in ammonia than those from any other quarter.

NITROGEN is a gaseous body, so that when it is spoken of as an element of plant food, it must be understood that it cannot be applied by itself, but only in combination with some salt, like sodium, ammonium, or potassium. It is in the form of nitrates that its application is most practicable, and in this form it is readily available to plants. The farmer who asked for a bag of nitrogen was surprised to find that there was no such thing.

WITH Corn on the cob the proportional weight of the cob is, on an average, about one-eighth. Different varieties will vary slightly, but the general ratio will be one to seven.

TREES, shrubs and other plants may be overfed, when they will make too rank and watery a growth and not ripen their wood sufficiently. In such cases they do not resist the extremes of cold in winter and the great changes of the seasons, nor do they bear as well as they otherwise would. If underfed, on the other hand, they are apt to become stunted, and are neither useful nor beautiful. We have to use judgment as well as manures. Ripeness of woody fibre is essential to hardiness, and, indeed, it may be regarded as the source of hardiness.

THE perfect management of pear and apple orchards implies the frequent stirring of the surface with the cultivator or hoe, so as to keep it well pulverized. Once a week is none too often, and in severe and long-continued droughts, it is of the highest importance. The trees will make and maintain a better foliage for it, and perfect their fruit all the better. A soil kept well and often cultivated will show greater moisture two or three inches below the surface, which it would not show if it were allowed to harden. The influence of frequent cultivation is wonderful, and may be regarded as the secret of success.

LAWES AND GILBERT, two accurate experimenters in England, fed a given number of sheep, on two acres of land, with a ton of cottonseed meal; by the side of the same, on two similar acres, they fed to the same number of sheep, a ton of corn meal. They harvested in the first season and the first crop of the second year, fifteen hundred more pounds of hay where the cotton-seed meal was fed than where corn meal was fed. That is just about the difference in manurial value of these articles, and what might reasonably be expected in any similar experiment.

THE Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst, is now, after so many years of vicissitudes, in a fair way to become a credit and an honor to the commonwealth. A farmer can now send his son there with a reasonable degree of confidence that he will be well taught, and that the tone and discipline of the college will be such as to give promise of turning out first-class citizens. It is worthy of a far more

FROM THE CENSUS OF 1880.

* Less than half of one per cent. difference between 1870 and 1880.

INDIAN CORN.

WHEAT.

OATS.

BARLEY.

RYE.

BUCKWHEAT.

N. Hampshire

1,358,625

1,277,768

169,316 193,621 1,018,006 1,146,451

77,877

105,822

34,638

47,420

94,127 100,034