Agricultural and Pastoral.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1624, 30 October 1874, Page 409

Agricultural and Pastoral.

Value of Good Cows.— An aged and observant dairyman said, " Look out for the poor cows; there is a great deal of money made by dairying in this country, but it is all made by good cows." Setting a Horse's Broken Leg.—Mr W. Field, sen., of Woodville, writes to the South Australian Advertize! of the 6th July, asking," Why shoot horses with broken legs ?" and he expresses his astonishment that, so far as he has heard, no veterinary surgeon has ever attemted to set the leg of a horse. After referring to the loss sustained by Mr Crossman through the death of his entire horse Champion in this way, he goes on to speak of the complete success that had attended his own treatment of a ram's broken leg, and a horse's, and, though the latter always went a little lame, for stud purposes he was as good as ever. He concludes by expressing a hope " that any person who may read this, who is owner of valuable horses, mil not be foolish enough to have them destroyed, merely because they happen to have a broken leg." Figs may be propagated very readily by means of layers, or by cuttings. If you have any old stock plants, with suckers from the ground, make several cuts in the latter near the base, then bank up the soil around them and hammer it firm. Cuttings may be made, say two buds long, square and smooth below and close to the bottom bud, and say half an inch above the upper one. Prepare a shallow box of pure sand, with some little drainage in the bottom, and insert the cuttings in it their whole length, merely allowing the upper bud to show at the surface. Set the box on a gentle hot-bed, and in a short time the plants will begin to grow. Give plenty air and water, but do it judiciously. What is called hard-wood or out-door cuttings may be made up about six or eight inches long, placed in the open ground, in light, mellow soil, with the top bud even with the surface. Mulch the soil slightly, and water now and then, A novice will meet with failures for a while, but success will follow perseverance. Onion Growing.— lt is reported in a Farmer's Journal that an extensive grower of the fragrant onion saves his crop from its worst enemy by adopting the following plan : —" He plants the seed as deep as it will bear, as the maggots, when first hatched, are too weak to go down in the soil, and by deep planting many will die before reaching their natural food, or be so long working down that the onion mil have had time to make a larger growth, and thus yield food enough to support the maggots without obliging them to seek the next onion in the row," Our contemporary also describes the practice of Mr S. P. Warner, of Sunderland, Mass., who maintains that the favorite breeding place of the enemy is in withered tops of last year's crops. He therefore carefully turns over all refuse matter upon the onion bed late in the Autumn, dresses liberally with well-defined manure, leaving it upon the surface exposed to the ameliorating influence of the Winter's frosts and the drenching rain of Spring-time; sows early in thoroughly pulverized ground, and attends carefully to the after culture. With this treatment the crop usually gets an early start, makes a vigorous growth, and is able to withstand attacks of enemies and changes of weather. In his neighborhood the damage by the maggot would not amount to five per cent, of the crop in the most unfavorable seasons. Slugs, and how to destroy them.— The following letter appears in a Auckland faper: —"In your answers to correspondents, noticed a plan recommended to get rid of slugs, and knowing that they are a great pest to many people, I will give an easy way to get rid of them, which is simply to keep a few pigeons. For about eight years they were so bad in my garden that I could not grow anything. After planting about one hundred cabbage plants, I could seldom get more than one dozen cabbages. Lettuce, onions, and many other things, it was useless to plant, as the slugs would destroy them all long before they came to maturity. My wife had a very nice collection of flowers from seeds brought from home; the slugs destroyed a good many of them; and to keep them from destroying the whole, she used to take a candle and pair of scissors after dark, and night after night would clip through from 1,000 to 1,200, and still we could grow nothing. We tried lime, and salt, but of no use ; at last I had two pairs of pigeons made me a present of in Auckland. After bringing them home they used to visit my garden pretty often, and I wondered what they got there, but I soon found out it was slugs ; and since I have had them I can grow anything in my garden again, and no fear of slugs, and we never bother now with the scissors. I have killed one since, with nothing in its crop but slugs, I have had them now two years, and they have never destroyed anything in the garden but slugs. I would not have troubled you with so long a letter, but that I know many people think pigeons are very destructive; and I here wish to show that they are not,J am, &c., Old BHEiL," .