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Rinderpest.

We do not realize, till we look carefully at the figures, the terrible visitation to which our English friends have been subjected, and from which we have been, as yet, so happily exempted in the fatal Rinderpest.

The return published by the Veterinary Department of the British Privy Council, for the week ending December 30th, gives an account of the loss of stock by the disease, from its commencement in June to the end of the year 1865, as reported by the local inspectors. In England 48,964 animals were attacked during the whole period, and of them 11,142 were killed as a preventive measure, 27,177 absolutely died of the disease, 3,655 recovered from the attack, and 6.990 diseased animals were remaining on Dec. 30th, whose fate will be recorded in subsequent returns.

In Wales the disease was confined to the two counties of Denbigh and Flint, and the total number attacked was 2,287; of these 93 were killed, 1,565 died, 218 recovered, and 411 remained under observation.

In Scotland 22,298 animals were attacked2.998 of these were killed, 12,749 died, 3, 172 reCovered, and 6,381 cases were undetermined.

In Great Britain, therefore, the aggregate num1ers stands thus: Attacked, 73,549; killed, 13, 031; died, 41,491; recovered, 7,045; and 11,082 (or 15 per cent. of the attacks) are brought forward into the account for 1866.

The Mark Lane Express contrasts, with indignation, the trifling of the English, and the energy of the French Government, in protecting their people against the plague, and makes an exhibit of the rate of increase in England to the first of February:

up theories of Government, to expect nothing wise, nothing virtuous, nothing progressive from statesmen, but merely to look for this result, that they shall move when they are pushed, and stop when the popular pressure relaxes.

"The most wonderful thing just now is to see stock owners losing their cattle, and still in a resigned attitude of mind-rosy only with good natured sadness, not with boiling temper. But it is enough to enrage any class, except that of tenant farmers, to take one glance at other countries saved by administrative vigor, and then to look at our own condition.

Here are a few of the figures relative to Great Britain:

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"The weekly increase latterly has been at the rate of about one-fifth. Supposing that this rate of progress continues, what will be the number of attacks in half a year's time? It is the old calculation over again of a farthing for the first nail of a horse's shoe, two farthings for the second nail, four farthings for the third, eight farthings for the fourth, and so on till you are surprised "The French veterinarians came over long ago at the amount for the last nail of the fourth shoe and so reported upon the nature and course of Adding one-fifth every week, we get some 40,000 the disease in our country that the French Gov-attacks for the first week in March, 97,000 for the ernment acted at once, and successfully held the plague out of its empire Our Government didn't know,' and yet the French Government had already examined into the whole affair as it existed in England, and thereupon did all that was required for the safety of French cattle as long since as September. Does our Government suppose that, though it must have known what to do, it will be excused because the public generally would not have approved the only efficient measures? If it is not one duty of rulers to take the initiative to ascertain what steps are requisite in great and sudden emergencies, and then to inform its people and thus create an enlightened pinion on the matter, it is about time to give

first week in April, 202,000 for the first week in May, 500,000 for the first week in June, over a million for the first week in July, by which time the total of cases would amount to no less than six millions. Half the head of cattle in the kingdom would, at this rate, be attacked by the first week in June. We do not say that this disease will spread regularly with this rapidity we only say that it is actually extending with this speed now, and has been during the last few weeks. If anybody chooses to take it for granted that the totals will presently be found to fall off, and the disease gradually grow weaker in its murderous course, we are equally at liberty to expect that the mortality will increase."

their constituents, they saddle the expenses on a

The American Farmer. tax-burdened people; and the scandalous mean

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ness must be covered by some such device as this distribution of seeds. For this, and the official publications which subserve, in a measure, the same end, we are not disposed to hold the Commissioner to too close an account. They are means to an end, justified in the minds of Government officers, by the high, State necessity, of holding on to their official positions.

But with the character and contents of these publications, we shall deal with candor and freedom. If the Federal Government sets up to teach, it is our duty to know, and our business to inform the readers of "The Farmer" of, the worth of what is put forth, by the head Professor of Modern Agricultural Science.

Our attention is drawn in this direction just now, by, what seems to us, the propriety of rescuing the fame of certain friends of ours, from the somewhat damaging eminence to which the the Commissioner has exalted it. Turning, by accident, to the report of 1862, we find that the Government Professor gets up an essay on how to grow tobacco. Col. W. W. Bowie, of Prince George's, and Mr. Oliver N. Bryan, of Charles

had published in "The American Farmer," valuable essays on the subject, as was well known to the Commissioner; for he was always wise enough to read "The Farmer," and it was his duty to have got one of them, to furnish him the necessary matter for the report on this subject, unless he could command the services of a writer having at least some knowledge of the subject.—

There has been, in the agricultural journals, a great deal of criticism of the Government Department of Agriculture, with which, so far as it is personally unkind or unfriendly to the Com-county, highly respectable citizens of Maryland, missioner, we do not sympathise. We have reason to think that officer a worthy gentleman, who is doing the best he can, at least, in what the Government has set him to do. He has done much useful service, he has put his department far in advance of what it has been heretofore, and is generally accorded, we believe, the merit, which is no small one, of having secured for himself many able assistants. The miserable busi-But it was necessary, no doubt, to give the job ness of broad-cast seed-sowing, which makes a department of Government the distributing shop of seeds gathered from every where, or anywhere, the Commissioner is hardly responsible for. It has been carried on too long, and is too well established, to be broken up by less than a stronger hand than his. The thousands of little packages made up in the Commissioner's office, with the thousands of potted plants in the gardens, are so many petty "sops for Cerberus," without the help of which, with members of Congress, the department had suffered for necessary funds, or the Commissioner's official head had fallen. When that fine old Maryland gentleman, John G. Chapman, was in Congress, he bought, at a very high price, fifty to a hundred bushels of what, he had reason to think, a valuable variety of wheat; paid for it with his own money, and distributed it in small packages, at his own cost. But this is not the way of modern Congressmen. While they are liberal of affectionate remembrances to

to some one who had a friend in Congress, and knowledge of the subject seemed unnecessary, where the back volumes of "The American Farmer" were at hand. But even these, the writer of the made up essay, which goes out under the auspices of the Government, so mistakes and perverts, that the only wise thing said is, that "those who are commencing the culture of tobacco, should avail themselves of the services of an experienced man, who can supply the knowledge which cannot be learned from books." Meaning, of course, such books as this Government report.

Col. Bowie is made to say, that the tobacco crop should be "liberally top-dressed, every ten days, with a compost of unleached ashes, virgin woods' earth, pulverized sulphur, plaster and salt." Think of Mr. Bowie top-dressing his tobacco field of fifty acres, or Mr. Hill his field of a hundred acres, with a nicely prepared compost of impossible things, put on-“liberally”— "every ten days!"

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Mr. Bryan, he says, advises, manuring the crop What the Government Teaches of the with Peruvian guano, "at the rate of a thousand Destruction of Soils." pounds to the acre!"-or "hog manure,"—requiring a very big hog-pen to supply it,-"or well rotted oak ashes,"-demanding a large consumption of oak timber,-"or well rotted stable manure, with plaster."

he

As doctors always follow their own prescriptions, let us assume that Col. Bowie has taken his own advice, and make an estimate of what he has done in the way of manuring. We will say has been a "Patuxent Planter" for twenty-five years,-hoping no offence, if we do him any wrong on this point,-and suppose he has cultivated, each year, in tobacco, a field of fifty acres: A "liberal" dressing of compost would be, say twenty-five horse-cart loads per acre. Put this on "every ten days," up to the first week of August, when the suns of summer might be supposed to repress his energies, and the state of the growing crop might present some obstacles, the matter would stand about thus :-Six applications a season, one hundred and fifty loads per acre; for fifty acres, seven thousand five hundred loads; fifty acres for twenty-five years, ONE HUNDRED

AND EIGHTY-SEVEN THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED

LOADS OF COMPOST, which he has manipulated in the short period named.

Of course, neither Col. Bowie nor Mr. Bryan have advised any such nonsense, as is ascribed to them. The explanation of the matter is, that their manuring prescriptions was intended for the little plots, in which the plants are raised, which require special nursing and forcing, and the writer for the Government Department of Agriculture, was first too careless to quote them correctly, and then, too ignorant of his subject to see the folly

of the mistake he has made.

Let it not be supposed we have misrepresented this essayist. He, very probably, took the gentlemen named to be enterprising Northern men who had settled in the lower counties, and were teaching the natives wisdom. He, plainly, admired their liberal way of manuring, for he had just been comparing the tobacco growing of Connecticut and Maryland, to the disadvantage of the latter, and quotes these writers to show, that a new light was dawning in this region. The "'curse of slavery" being now "wiped out," it will be expected of such men of progress, that they advance these rates of manuring up to the present "situation." Perhaps they will be good enough to let The Old Farmer know, what they are thinking, after further reflection, of agricultural matters in general, and of manuring tobacco fields in particular.

In the Report, before alluded to, of the Commissioner of Agriculture, is an item headed "Destruction of Soil," embraced in the article on Agricultural Statistics, from which we quote as follows: "But few greater calamities could befall a nation than the impoverishment of its lands.Virginia stands as a lesson to other States. Her unskillful tobacco cultivation ruined the finest portion of her territory."

In a grave State paper on statistics, ornament is not looked for, for rhetoric can add nothing to the force of figures. The Commissioner, therefore, might have dispensed with the flourish about beautiful, as it is stale, flat, and unprofitable, it Virginia. If it were original, and fresh, and would still only gratify the base sentiment which delights in the detraction of that brave old State. We pass over, however, a matter of taste, and prepare to notice again the teachings of the Government officer, who assumes the duty of Instructor General in Agriculture. We mean to show, that if his taste is bad, his teaching is worse, and that in making a mean fling at Virginia he has betrayed not a want of acquaintance with facts merely, but ignorance of scientific truth. And we do so, not for the sake of discussion, or to make up an article, but because the truth ignored, not by the Commissioner only, but frequently and commonly, is of very material importance.

He tells us that a portion of the territory of Virginia is "ruined." We deny that any portion of her territory is ruined, in the sense he means to convey, that is by "the destruction of the soil." He says, the "finest portion" is ruined. We say, if any be ruined, it is not the finest. He says, it is ruined by "unskillful tobacco cultiva tion." We deny that what he calls "ruin" is the effect of "unskillful tobacco cultivation."

We will consider these points in their reverse order, and begin with the last. It is a mistake to suppose that tobacco is an especially exhausting crop. It does, indeed, make large drafts from the soil, of its mineral constituents, but of these it leaves behind, in the stalk and waste, a large portion, in condition so available that no fertilizer is more prized than the waste from the tobacco house. Its cultivation demands the most thorough preparation for planting, and the most careful exclusion of weeds, and requires very little exposure of the soil to the summer's sun, before it becomes closely shaded by the spreading leaves. When the crop comes off, the ground is in the best condition for grain, and especially for the clover and grass following, which flourish as after no other crop. Then the degree of care, and

good cultivation, which tobacco demands, educates the most careless farmer into good habits. Whatever the condition of the farm otherwise, there is always before him, in the tobacco field, an example of good cultivation, which has its influence on the general management. It cannot be said of such a crop that, well cultivated, it is destructive of the soil. On the contrary, the necessary manuring, the careful husbandry, the excellent preparation it makes for the cheap improvement by clover and the grasses, has made it a conservative element in our system of cropping.

But "unskillful tobacco cultivation" is the language of the Report; and, paradoxical as it may seem, the remark is as little true of unskillful as of skillful cultivation. In the early history of our tobacco growing, when the present well known means of maintaining fertility were little known, and less practised, it was the very want of skill which characterized it, that preserved the soil.— | Skill enables the cultivator to take the largest possible crops, and to continue their production the longest time. The greater the skill, the greater the draft upon the essential elements of the soil. Wanting this, there was a necessity for resorting continually to new surfaces, where the overlying mould would substitute thorough and skilful working; and so while the old lands were not ruined, new lands were constantly opened to cultivation. The harm done was the skimming of the surface soil, the good, the subjection of the forest lands to the plough.

sioner means to convey. The words ho uses, and the kindred expression "worn out," convey a lesson that is inconsistent with the teachings of science. These terms grew, naturally enough, out of the common opinion of times past, that "soil" meant only a few inches of surface earth, mixed with the vegetable remains of the forest, and of the plants that had perished on it, and that these constituted its chief, if not its only, value. This vegetable mould was the measure of fertility; if it abounded, the soil was rich—if deficient, it was poor. It was proper that those who held that opinion, should say, when these original surface recumulations of vegetable material were consumed, that the soil was "exhausted," or "destroyed," or "worn out." That was indeed worn out, which, in their opinion, made the soil. The expressions were the outgrowth of an erroneous notion, and being so, they represent, and uphold, and teach that error still; and that, we maintain, the Commissioner of Agriculture, least of all, has a right to do.

Modern science teaches that the earthy elements are as necessary, at least, as the atmospheric, and as the latter abound and super-abound outside of the soil, and when consumed are readily replaced, we are taught to estimate a soil, by the variety, the proportion, and the condition of its inorganic elements. Well constituted as regards these, it is a good soil, otherwise a poor one, without reference to the quantity of vegetable mould which may happen to be present. The point we make is, that there is no evidence that any such soil has ever, since the world began, been worn out. Its original proportions may have been somewhat

elements, and the original balance somewhat disturbed of the presently available portions of these elements, but that this is not destruction, thousands of familiar instances of restored fertility, are the proof. It is a present disability, which the intelligence and skill of the cultivator is called on to correct. In some cases, and with the infe

As to the point, that "the finest portion of her territory" has been destroyed, as the Report has it, it does not need discussion. So far as the de-altered, by the draft of certain crops on certain struction went, such lands gave way fastest, as were least capable of withstanding the treatment they received, and these were certainly, not the finest. Or if it be maintained, that the best were first opened, and longest subjected to hard usage, the answer is, that it is contrary to all experience that the most fertile lands of a new country are opened first. The settler brings first into culti-rior class of soils, he will find occasion to feed vation such lands as offer least resistance to his axe, and these are not the richest. But the facts speak for themselves. Some of the finest lands which the world knows almost, are those which for four years past have been devastated by contending armies, within the limits of Virginia.She owns them still, and if she has had any better, destroyed by tobacco cultivation, we do not know of it.

Now, as to the other and most important point, that of "the destruction of the soil:" We deny that there is any destruction, or any material approach to it, in the sense which the Commis

his crops, as he would his animals, with food fit for them-special applications to meet special demands; but in well constituted soils, he must bring to bear chiefly, the art and appliances of skillful cultivation, not because the soil has been destroyed, but because of its indestructibility.He needs to break up combinations, and to set free, and make available, to his crops, the elements which the earth locks up too closely. Be must dig as for hid treasure; there must be hard knocks before the door will be opened. All this is inconsistent with the rapid wearing out which the other opinion teaches, and only shows that

the wearing is not fast enough, to meet the wants of cultivation. We might fear the result of these operations, if there were reason to think that there was any material difference between those portions of the soil fit for plant food, and those not fit, except as to their present availability.

That surface skimming of the soil, of all the old States,-of Virginia, no more than any other, has been more the consequence of sparseness of population, and scarcity of labor, than any other cause. It was more convenient, and thought to be more profitable, to open new lands, than to renew the old; and, finally, more profitable still to transport the laboring population to the wealthy cotton and sugar lands of the Southwestern States.

Cats and Clover.

By what manner of con-cat-enation cats and clover are brought into conjunction, many of our readers will wonder. If we make a farmer believe that his crop of clover depends somewhat on the life of his cat, will he not begin to felicitate himself that the cat has nine lives, and take more care that they be not needlessly destroyed?

Mr. Darwin, in his work on "Species in our Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants," records some interesting observations and facts, on the fertilizing of plants, by the agency of insects. The tubes of the corollas of the common red and incarnate clovers, (trifolium pratense and incarnatum,) do not appear, at a hasty glance, to differ much in length; yet the hive-bee can easily suck the nectar out of the incarnate clover,

but not out of the common red clover. The hive

animal in large numbers, in a district, might determine, through their intervention, first of mice, and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district."

This gives us a somewhat striking impression of the singular complication in the relations of natural objects, which we look upon generally as having a very remote connection, and makes us think there was a little philosophy, may be, in the old nursery story, showing how the cat helped the old woman to get an obstinate pig over the bridge-"the cat began to kill the rat, the rat began to gnaw the rope, the rope began to hang the butcher," and so on to the interesting consummation, when, we are told, "piggy began to go."

But Mr. Darwin makes an extreme statement in favor of the bees and the cats, for he overlooks the fact that both the clovers referred to are fre

quented by butterflies, which have a much longer proboscis than bees, and also by certain day-flying moths; and, as fertilization in these clovers seems to depend on the corolla being moved, and · the pollen thus pushed on to the stigmatic surface, their comparatively tranquil visits may suffice for this purpose, as well as the bustling activity of the restless bees.

Humble-bees seem also indispensable to the fertilization of the violet, and Mr. Darwin dreads at similar fate for it, if these insects should be destroyed. The existence of natural objects, however, has seldom been left to so uncertain contingencies. When one mode of propagation fails, another frequently comes into operation, and the violet would increase from off-shoots, even if it scarcely ever ripened a seed; just as mice, especially field mice, would be kept in check by rapacious birds and weasels, even if cats were to fail throughout the land.

Fruit Cultivation.

Being quite satisfied that the cultivation of fruit is a growing, and, destined soon to be, a great interest, in Maryland especially, we shall give greater attention, in future, to this department of "The Farmer," and hope to have it well furnished with original matter from reliable and competent sources.

bee, accordingly, visits the former; and these visits, it appears, from experiments recently made, are necessary for the fertilization of the plantThe common red clover is visited by humble-bees alone, and Mr. Darwin thinks that if the whole genus of humbles became extinct, or very rare, the red clover would also become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends, in a great degree, on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes that more than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England. Now the number of mice is Mr. Daniel Barker, of the Maryland Agricullargely dependent, as every one knows, on the tural College, a horticulturist of long experience number of cats; and Mr. Newman says: "Near in England, and this country, we are indebted villages, and small, towns, I have found the nests to, for our monthly notes for the Fruit, Flower, of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, and Vegetable Garden. Hereafter, with such which I attribute to the number of cats, which other, thoroughly competent assistants as may destroy the mice." "Hence," says Mr. Darwin, be needed, we shall enlarge this whole depart"it is quite credible that the presence of a felinement, and give it increased value and interest.

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