HOW THE CALIFORNIA FIELDS ARE PLOUGHED.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 247, 24 October 1872, Page 9

HOW THE CALIFORNIA FIELDS ARE PLOUGHED.

The fields are ploughed with what are called gang ploughs, which are simply four, six, or eight plough shares fastened to a stout frame of wood. On the lighter soil eight horses draw a seven gang plough, and one such team is counted on to put in 640 acres of wheat in the sowing season ; or from eight to ten acres per day. Captain Gray, near Merced, has put in this season 4000 acres with five such teams — his own land and his own teams. A seed sower i« fastened in front of the plough. It scatters the seed, the ploughs cover it — and the work is done. The plough has no handles, and the ploughman is, in fact, only a driver ; ho guides the team ; the ploughs Jo their own work. It is easy work, and a smart boy, if his legs are eqaal to the walk, is as gooda ploughman as anybody — for the team turns the corners, and the plough is not handled at all. It is a striking sight to see ten eight-horse teams following each other, over a vast plain, cutting "lands" a mile long, and when all have passed, leaving a track 40 feet wide of ploughed ground. On the heavier soil the process is somewhat different. An eight-horse team moves a four-gang plough, and gets over six acres per daj . The seed is then sown by a machine which scatters it forty feet, and sows from 75 to 100 acres in a day and the ground is then harrowed ami cross-harrowed. When the farmer in this valley has done his winter sowing he turns his teams and men into other ground, which he is to

summer fallow. This he can do from the first of March to the middle of May ; and by it he aet'ures a remunerative crop for the following year, even if the season is dry. This discovery is of inestimable importance to the farmers on the drier parts of these great plains. Experience has now demonstrated conclusively if they plough their land in the spring, let it lie until the winter rains come on, then sow their wheat and harrow it in, they are sure of a crop ; and the summer will have killed every weed besides, — "Scientific American."

A writer in the "Contemporary lieview makes a singular proposal with the view of testing experimentally the efficacy of prayer. It is to the effect that special prayers should be continually offered by all the believers in prayer who will consent to join during three or five years, for the recovery of the patients of a single hospital, without depriving ' one single child of man " of what the writer " had almost called his natural inheritance in the prayers of Christendom." He would then compare the average duration of sickness and the average rates of mortality in that hospital, with the same rates for the same class of diseases in other not specially distinguished hospitals, and regard the shortening of the average time of sickness, if any, and the diminution of the death-rate, if any, as a residuary phenomenon due to. the special prayer-power concentrated on that institution."

We «an safely reccomend a graduate of a newspaper office for almost any station in life, at least for all .which xeqnire a -very good knowledge of the peculiarities and characteristics of the human family. A man who can preserve the serenity of his temper, the sweetness of & Christian disposition,' -and an unflagging perseverance amid all the obstacles and difficulties which newspaper publication prosent, deserves to be ranked with Job for patience, Baxter for goodness, and the Iron Duke for nerve, power, and obstinate determination.—" The Christian World."-