With respect to the estimation of the money value of manures by chemists, there exists some difference of opinion, and by some analysists it is considered that it should be abandoned, whilst admitting that there may be occasionally inconveniences from the difference in the system of valuation which are adopted in different countries, yet as the method which I have always followed, and which may be found fully explained in my work on Practical Chemistry, is I believe, based upon sound data, and adapted to the estimation of the relative money value of the fertilising compounds offered for sale in Ireland, it will serve to afford purchasers, sometimes not quite familiar with the statements of an analysis, a safe guide in enabling them to protect themselves from imposition and loss. According to my system of valuation the estimated value per ton of the genuine Peruvian guano, such as was formerly readily to be obtained from several Belfast houses, is £13.10. The best sample given in the table, by the same method of calculation, is found to be worth only £10. 2s.

HORSES FEET REQUIRE MOISTURE.-Nine-tenths of the diseases which happen to the hoofs and ankles of the horse are occasioned by standing

on the dry plank floors of the stable.. Many persons seem to think, from the way they keep their horses, that the foot of the horse was never made for moisture, and that, if possible, it would be beneficial if they had cowhide boots to put on every time they went out. Nature designed the foot for moist ground-the earth of the woods and valleys; at the same time that a covering was given to protect it from stones and stumps.

-Ohio Farmer.

SHORT WAY TO CURE WARTS.-Heat an iron a little red, and sprinkle a little rosin on the wart, then apply the iron.

*Capable of yielding ammonia, 14.4 parts; estimated value, £11, 11s. per ton.

Wood Ashes for Manure. We recommend the farmer carefully to save for use in the spring all the ashes he can collect from the home consumption of fuel during the winter; and where he has opportunity to procure them from other sources a supply, leached or unleached, of this valuable fertilizer. If people knew from experience the worth of this simple manure, there would be no ashes wasted, neither would there be any to sell, except by those who have no soils to improve, or no crops

to raise.

To return all their virtue, it is highly important that ashes should be kept dry; for water will dissolve a large proportion of the most valuable salts, yet even leached ashes need not be thrown away as of no account; for, though far inferior in fertilizing qualities to unleached ashes, they are by no means useless. One very important result of the employment of this manure in the growth of cereals is the increased strength and luxuriance of straw thereby promoted-a result due to the presence of Silicates on which so much of stiffness of the straw depends. Other ingre dients, essential to both straw and grain are furnished by this important fertilizer. Ashes are valuable also for promoting the growth of grass; and Professor Liebig recommended sowing them broadcast on meadows to increase the quantity of hay.-Canada Farmer.

The Golden Pheasant.

We are surprised that greater interest is not manifested in breeding this rare and beautiful bird. There are many situations where it might be raised in considerable numbers, and be made a source of great attraction to say the least. This bird is a native of China. It is naturally wild and cannot be tamed so as to behave like our domestic poultry. It generally has to be

kept in aviaries or in confinement. The cock may be mated with five or six hens. The English books say that it is necessary that he should be two years old, but that the hen will breed at one year old. This is not so; Mr. Campbell, of Westboro', has four golden pheasants. The pullets began to lay at about eleven months old, the cocks being at the same age. The eggs were set

under a common hen, and some of them have hatched, coming out strong, and apparently as lively as any other chick.

The young hen will lay about a dozen eggs, but more mature birds have been known to lay forty eggs. The egg should be removed from the nest every day, as the males are apt to destroy them unless this precaution is taken. Imitation

to Farmers.

The cock does not assume his full plumage till the second year, when the head is ornamented with a silky crest of fine amber yellow. The feathers of the back of the head and neck are square, disposed in scales, and of a rich orangered, edged with a line of black, and capable of being raised at will; lower down, so as to encroach upon the top of the back, is a space of dark glossy greenish feathers, with rounded edges, disposed scale-like; the back is rich yellow, as are the upper tail covert, with a crimson border; the tail feathers are mottled with chestnut and black; the wings are deep blue at their base; quills and secondaries brown, with chestnut bars; the whole of the under surface intense scarlet. The female is of a rusty brown and less attractive. Massachusetts Ploughman.

The New York State Sheep Fair. On the 8th ult. the 3d annual Fair of the N. Y. Sheep Breeders' and Wool Growers' Association was opened at Auburn, says the Auburn Advocate. The following entries are mentioned:

"Wm. R. Sandford, of Vt., two rams, "Kilpatrick" and "Blucher," the former being valued at $12,000 in gold, and the latter $10,000 in currency; Mr. Freeman, of Bemis Heights, N. Y. with the celebrated "Dew Drop;" Mr. Wing of N. Y. City, with 5 coarse-wooled sheep, said to be the best in the United States; Mr. Holmes of Saratoga Co. with 5 fine animals. John Lynch, of West Brighton, exhibited 6 good Southdowns, of the kind first imported by Jonas Wall, and the latter by Mr. Thorn, of Duchess Co. Isaac Bower, North Chili, two Paular Merinoes, with fine, long wool, called the broathcloth sheep, the fleece of which brings in the market from 10 to 15 cents more than shorter wool. Another from his flock, a Robinson Paular, of fine, delaine fleece, is valued at $500; the other two $200 each. H. A. & H. Miller, of Greenwich, exhibited a beautiful Spanish Merino ram, "Young Dictator," by Percy's "Gold Mine," Hammond ewe, bred and owned by the exhibitor, valued at $500. One of "Dictator's" daughters was with him, a little pet, only six weeks old, and worth $125. The second day, like the first, was rainy. Friday, the third and last day, was a success; the attendance was large. Some of the finest sheep where sheared.

[From Edinburgh Quarterly Journal.] In our recent articles, "Vipers" and "Talpicide," we stienously contended for the utility of hedgehogs and moles, to the great indignation, we daresay, of sundry gamekeepers and farmers. But "truth is mighty, and will prevail." We have persuaded several agriculturists to try the experiment of letting the moles alone for one year at least, and to send for us in order that we may have the opportunity of inspecting any damage chargeable on them. Having asserted that our moles are not addicted to work in the line of the turnip drill, and that when they happen to take that direction, plants enough to insure a crop have always been left, a friend assures us that the mole's doings have repeatedly played havoc with his turnips. But the query may be put: "Would he have fared better if in his fields there had not been a single mole?" The moles were attracted by the grubs; if he had had no moles he would have had more grubs. With more grubs would he have had more turnips? The summer before last, our turnip-field had hardly any moles, and the grubs cut so many of the young plants close to the ground that the blanks were annoyingly nu

merous.

Moreover, a large farmer in Forfarshire, after reading "Talpicide," not only resolved no longer to kill moles, but informed us that during twenty years' experience he never saw turnips thrown out of the drill in consequence of the mole's pursuit of insects. We still maintain that the mischief alleged against them is exaggerated, and abundantly compensated by their remarkable talent for insecticide.

But, as the progress of truth and humanity is slow, we must allow our agricultural friends a little time to read, mark, and inwardly digest our plea for moles.

As we are open to conviction, we have resolved faithfully to report any charge they may make against our proteges.

We fear we are again about to shock the notions of farmers by gravely inviting them, if they won't patronize moles as grub-slayers, to employ their hens in this much needed office.

Of course, we all know how assiduously fowls follow the plow for the purpose of picking up all sorts of insects, and especially the detested "grub." But it never occured to any of us to afford a hen facilities for fattening on our foes, by removing her to the different fields according to their condition varying with the seasons. harvest-time we have the sense to facilitate the

At

toil of the reapers by conveying them in carts to the scene of their sometimes distant operations; but to send a hen in a portable house to live for months in the fields, and for the purpose of enabling her systematically to rid us of all sorts of farm pests-this is an idea quite new; and yet so natural, that it is marvellous that it never occurred to us! Here we are, with the nineteenth century of grace far advanced, and with the world near its end according to Dr. Cumming, and yet, till light dawned on the inquisitive mind of M. Giot, a farmer at Chevry, (Seine et Marne,) the idea of "Le Poulailler Roulant"-a hen-house on wheels-seems never to have entered the agricultural mind.

Smitten with the laudable ambition of bringing about the good time coming, when every Frenchman shall have a fowl in his pot, and of effecting this blessed change in the physical condition of his compatriots, by "entering into the views of Providence," M. Giot takes pen in hand, and writes like a litterateur and a savant upon the novel theme of the natural connection betwixt hens and harvests.

Before they have done with our account of his sagacious and economical mode of feeding fowls in the fields, we rather think that, reflecting on the comparatively unprofitable lives of British hens, not a few of our farming readers will confess that they have learned something new and worth the knowing. Let them look at that old omnibus located in a field, and fitted up with perches and nests, and however widely they may open the eyes of astonishment at such a machine, containing a multitude of fowls sent to pick up a living gratis, and be at the same time most effective destroyers of insect pests, they cannot oppose this novelty on the score of expense.

At first M. Giot was laughed at for talking of a portable hen-house costing a thousand francs, and needing the attendance of a watchman and a dog to look after it during the night. But the discovery has been made that any rough sort of an affair upon wheels, and capable of being shut, will answer the purpose, and that the system may be carried out on so small a scale that a dozen of hens conveyed to the land in a covered wheelbarrow will do a great deal of good. Placing it in a vineyard or a field, the owner of it may pursue his work in the assured confidence that the hens will attend to theirs, and show no desire to forsake their temporary house on the wheelbarrow.

But we inust expound the rationale of M. Giot's procedure. He is a humane man and a philosophical. He argues that we must not denaturalize the habits of hens. A hen shut up in a court

and fed upon expensive grain is out of her element. She, an insectivorous bird, never sees a grub or a worm, and has only the rare chance of getting hold of a spider or a fly. Meanwhile the food provided for her in the fields is there in abundance; the innumberable insects which vex the farmer gain the mastery, because not only are fowls shut up, or only accustomed to frequent the fields near the farm house, but all sorts of insectivorous birds and animals, such as moles and hedgehogs, are senselessly killed. And so, instead of the proper distribution of the good things of this life, grubs for fowls, &c., and grain for man and the domesticated animals, we witness the deplorable spectacle of cultivated fields ravaged by full-fed insects while men are half-starved, and agricultural is about the most slenderly remunerated of those avocations which demand the possession of capital, and the assiduous application of intelligent industry.

It cannot be questioned, we believe, that the more the farmer avails himself of natural auxilliaries in the raising of his crops, the more abundant these will be; so that if his fowls be among the number of them, he ought to consider how they can be made to do him most service. It is notorious that he denounces them as a sort of necessary nuisance, which must be submitted to because poultry is prized by certain classes, and almost everybody is fond of eggs. He holds, nevertheless, that "they are bad farmers," that they don't "pay, and that he would be wise to have none of them," &c.

But M. Giot, a farmer and a man of sense, who can weigh the pros and cons of a question affecting his calling, tells quite a different story; asserting that in the interest of agriculture we ought to direct the insectivorous habits of fowls, which naturally ramble about in search of a living, and are only mischievous at seedtime and harvest; and that the very simplicity of his plan of managing is the reason of its having been overlooked, according to our custom of searching in the clouds for what is under our feet.

That is putting his case very strongly, no doubt; it is in fact saying that farmers heretofore have had less sense than their hens. And yet we are hugely afraid that such is the fact. M. Giot "craws sae crouse"-not on his dunghill, that time honored stronghold of farmers, but on his hen-house in the fields-that we really do not see how to quiet him unless by chiming in with him; on the principle of the accommodating old lady who maintained that the way to overcome temptation was to yield to it.

Who can deny that a hen is of the nature of

in opposition to the sorry jokes of the incredulous. He then proceeds: We do not laugh now; we have just seen the 400 hens of two portable houses advancing in the furrows along with the plough, and so thoroughly ridding them of white-worms and other insects that none can be discovered where the fowls have been. The fields are long; the population of the two hen-houses form two camps-here the common fowls, there the Houdan. Each troop has its assigned space, and works in it as if the matter had been regulated by special compact. One of the houses was on the old model, as exhibited in the district shows, but the watchman and his dog are now dispensed with as needless. The other is an old omnibus bought in Paris, with the seats removed, and replaced by nests and perches for its present occupants, the Houdans. The houses are placed across the furrows, and the doors are open. When in the way of the plough they are shifted; and when the field is finished, two horses are yoked to each of them, and they are taken to another place.

The fowls work all the year, and are only brought back to the farm in winter. There is no difficulty in managing them. As to food, there is no occasion to be troubled about it unless during continued rain, which rarely happens. The fowls of M. Giot, thus reared in the open air, are hardy, lively, and free from all the diseases of those living almost in a state of captivity. They give plenty of eggs, and furnish a considerable quantity of manure, which is carefully collected in a box under the hen-houses. Our readers will understand that brood-hens cannot in it receive proper attention, and that they are removed to the farm."

Equally satisfactory is the report of M. A. De Lavalette, who seems to have paid particular attention to the effect of insect diet upon the laying power of the hens, and upon the quality of the eggs. He estimates that 400 fowls may daily destroy 200,000 white-worms, which, becoming so many cockchafers, ravage beautiful trees, and lay eggs which will become a host of whiteworms. And, he exclaims, 'we are astonished at these creatures destroying our crops!' The portable hen-house is thus of importance in an economical point of view. Supposing 400 hens to lay 200 eggs daily, this is a gain of 12 to 15 francs, realised without expense; and, on the other hand the fowls grow, gain more flesh, and so become more valuable. Ifit be objected that the eggs of fowls fed on white-worms must be bad, like those laid by fowls which eat silkworms, we say, let us first make a distinction. Silkworms given to fowls are generally those which have died from disease, or are sometimes in a state of putrefac

tion. It is not so with the white-worms, which are swallowed alive and vigorous, and which, therefore, do not produce the same results. To enable us to form an opinion on this point, we requested Madame Giot to give us at breakfast two lots of eggs boiled in their shells, the one from the portable hen-house, the other from the farm. We must say that the guests found the eggs from the farm the more delicate, but that the others were excellent, and that the shade of difference was hardly perceptible when the two sorts were presentd in a dish or in an omelette.

M. Giot also directed attention to the circumstance that the yolks of those from the field henhouses were much superior to the others, and that one was equal to at least three of these for making sauces. We must not, then, be repelled by the notion that eggs so obtained are bad. One not made aware of it would not observe the difference; and very often have we eaten worse eggs in Paris.

As to the flesh of the fowl, we need not trouble ourself about that; for even if it acquired a peculiar flavour, or lost its delicacy, this could be remedied by the fowl being treated to a special diet for a few days before it was eaten. cannot too earnestly advise farmers to procure portable hen-houses, of sizes proportioned to the extent of their lands.'

We

Mr. Moore, of the Rural New Yorker, recently visited Washington, and says:

One of my first visits, after calling upon Commissioner of Agriculture Newton, was to the Government Botanical Garden, of which Mr. Wm. Saunders is the capable Superintendent, (under Com. Newton,) and the Experimental Grounds, also an adjunct of the Ag'l Department, superintended by Isaac Newton, Jr. The Garden has been greatly improved since my last visit, two years ago, and is a credit to Mr. Saunders and the Department. The fruit and ornamental trees, shrubs, grape vines, green-house plants, flowers, &c., are numerous and most healthy and flourishing-many exotics, but in fine condition. Whatever may be said of the Ag'l Department, I am of the opinion that Mr. Saunders is "the right man in the right place,"