HINTS TO AGRICULTURISTS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 70, 8 July 1843, Page 279

HINTS TO AGRICULTURISTS.

Pulverize the Soil.— Few farmers are probably aware of the vast importance of keeping the earth well pulverized, and especially in seasons of drought. It has been observed by the celebrated Mr. Tull, and many others since, his time, that thoroughly pulverizing the soil, and reducing it to a perfect tilth, increases an<L> extends the pasture of plants. The soil thus" pulverized more readily attracts the moisture always floating in the atmosphere. Mr. Joseph Wimpey says — " I made several observations, which clearly explain, to my own satisfaction, how dividing and pulverizing the soil becomes the proper mode of conveying the aliment prepared by Nature for the sustenance of plants into the bosom of the earth. One observation I will mention, as it is directly to ihe purpose. One evening, near the time of the men's leaving off. work, a smart shower of rain came on, which drove them off. They were digging one of the plots where beans had previously grown. The shower did not last more than half an hour. The next morning, as the men were digging, I observed that the rain had not penetrated above half an inch into the ground. I requested one of them to dig two or three spits of the ground that had been dug the day before, when it clearly appeared that the rain, in the new dug ground, had gone as deep as the spade, which was full twelve inches.": — Philadelphia Saturday Courier. Soap Suss a Specific for Nourishing Flowers. — A fair correspondent writes to us from Newton Stuart, in the following terms : — " Recently I happened to gather a beautiful pansey, and when tired of admiring it, tossed the toy aside, which partly by accident fell into a box full of soap suds. The said pansey had neither joint nor root, and you may judge of my surprise when, at the end of a day or two, I found it growing. From this time forward I watched it narrowly, and now find it, after the lapse of a fornight, a goodly plant with several buds on it. Thinking water might produce the same effect, I placed a newly cropped pansey in an element, which, pure in itself, is the medium of purity in everything else; but they withered and died on so spare a diet. By way of confirming the first experiment, I have since placed ~a slip of rose tree and a pink in suds, and both are flourishing in great vigour in my dressing-room. Should this accidental discovery prove useful to florists, it will afford sincere pleasure to your correspondent. — Dumfries Courier. Planting and Removing Trees. — There is ■ a good deal too much stress laid upon the instructions to take up large balls of earth with shrubs. From two nurseries we have seen the most extraordinary difference in the taking up of trees — the one sent every fibre of the root, but no earth ; the other sent balls of considerable size, but all tbe points of the roots chopped off completely. Now we venture to "predict, that, where all the fibres have been saved undamaged, the plants will thrive immediately, though there were no balls ; and that those with balls will be greatly checked, though nothing is more common than such mode of removing. — Gardeners' Gazette. Feeding Poultry. — Frofessor Gregory, of Aberdeen, in a letter to a friend, observes : — "As I suppose you keep poultry, I may tell you that it has been ascertained that if you mix with - their food a sufficient quantity of eggshells or chalk, which they eat greedily, they will lay, cceteris paribus, twice or thrice as many eggs as before. A well-fed fowl is disposed to lay a vast number of eggs, but cannot do so without the materials for the shells, however nourishing in other respects her food may be ; indeed, a fowl fed on food or water free from carbonate of lime, and not finding any in the soil, or in the shape of mortar, which they often eat off the walls, would lay no eggs at all with the best will in the world. Lay this to heart, and let me know in spring if the hens lay two for one." Handling of Oxen. — In all domesticated animals, the hide or skin forms one of the best criteria by which we can estimate their fattening properties. The touch is said to be good or bad, fine or harsh. When it feels soft and silky, it is a proof of tendency injthe animal to take meat. A thick firm skin, which iB generally covered by a thickset, hard, short hair, always handles hard, and indicates a bad feeder. A beast having a perfect touch will have a thick loose skin, floating, as it were, on a layer of soft fat, yielding to the smallest pressure, and springing back towards the finger like a piece of soft thick chamois leather. Such a skin will be usually, covered with an abundance of glossy hair, feeling like a bed of moss, and hence the very appropriate name, a mossy skin. — Veterinarian. Potatoes and Brocoli.— -It may be useful to country gardeners to be informed that after young* potatoes are cleared from the rows, and the ground well dug in the form of shallow trenches, and manured, it will be advantageous to transplant spring brocoli plants in the trenches. This vegetable flourishes greatly after the potatoe — as does also wheat upon a larger scale in farming. The excrementitious matter of ihe flax plant, and also that of parsnips, is equally favourable with the potatoe to c good crop of wheat, if sown soon after they are severally removed.

New Thkoxy or ELZcifeicrrr. — Sir Grave's Haughton h&s made a scries of experiments in electricity which go to disprove all previous theories concerning its nature ; he enunciates the following proposition: — Electrical and magnetics! phenomena depend for their variety upon the nature and form of the body in which they Appear, and the quantity of electric fluid present, whether current or quiescent. — AtUu. \