Part 35

But the cane is subject to the necessity of annual and careful cultivation, and its manufacture is comparatively expensive and difficult. Whereas the maple is a permanent tree, requires no cultivation, may be raised on the borders of farms without taking up ground, and its sap is easily convertible into sugar, and if carefully made, into sugar as good as cane-sugar can be. Add to the above considerations that the sugar-making period is a time of comparative leisure with the farmer, and the motives for attention to this subject of domestic sugar-making seem to be complete.

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LETTUCE.—Those who wish fine head lettuce should prepare a rich, mellow bed of light soil; tough and compact soil will not give them any growth. In transplanting, let there be at least one foot between each plant. Stir the ground often. If it is very dry weather, water at evening copiously, if you water at all; but the hoe is the only watering-pot for a garden, if thereby the soil is kept loose and fine. We have raised heads nearly as large as a drum-head cabbage by this method, very brittle, sweet and tender withal.

Dr. J. C. Jackson puts Vermont at 6,000,000 lbs. per annum, while the census only gives about 4,000,000.

The data of these calculations, it must be confessed, are very uncertain, and conclusions drawn from them as to the relative amounts of sugar produced in different States, are to be regarded, at the very best, as problematical. We extract the following remarks from an article in the Western Literary Journal, from the pen of Charles Cist, an able statistical writer:

“It is not my purpose to go into an extended notice of the errors in the statistics connected with the census of 1840. A few examples will serve to show their character and extent. In the article of hemp, Ohio is stated to produce 9,080 tons, and Indiana 8,605—either equal nearly to the product of Kentucky, which is reported at 9,992 tons, and almost equal, when united, to Missouri, to which 18,010 tons are given as the aggregate. Virginia is stated to raise 25,594 tons, almost equal to both Kentucky and Missouri, which are given as above at 28,002 tons. Now the indisputable fact is, that Kentucky and Missouri produce more hemp than all the rest of the United States, and ten times as much as either Ohio, Indiana, or Virginia, which three States are made to raise 50 per centum more than those two great hemp-producing States.

“The sugar of Louisiana is given at 119,947,720 lbs., equal to 120,000 hhds., 160 per cent. more than has been published in New Orleans, as the highest product of the five consecutive years, including and preceding 1840.

“But what is this to the wholesale figure-dealing which returns 3,160,949 tons of hay, as the product of New York for that article! a quantity sufficient to winter all the horses and mules in the United States.

“Other errors of great magnitude might be pointed out; such as making the tobacco product of Virginia 11,000 hhds., when her inspection records show 55,000 hhds., thrown into market as the crop of that year. Who believes that 12,233 lbs. pitch, rosin and turpentine, or the tenth part of that quantity, were manufactured in Louisiana in 1840, or that New York produced 10,093,991 lbs. maple-sugar in a single year, or twenty such statements equally absurd, which I might take from the returns?”

Mr. Cist will find in the appendix to Dr. Jackson’s Final Report on the Geology of New Hampshire, a statement, that Vermont makes 6,000,000 pounds of sugar annually. If this be so, we may, without extravagance, suppose that New York reaches 10,000,000 lbs. So far as we have collateral means of judging, the amount of maple-sugar is under-stated in the census of 1840.

Appendix to final Report on the Geology and Mineralogy of New Hampshire, page 361. This admirable Report is an able exposition of the benefit of public State surveys.

If those who drink whisky would pour it on to the sugar in the refining cones, instead of upon sugar in tumblers, it would refine them as much as it does the sugar; performing two valuable processes at once.

GEOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS.

Many terms, in general use among scientific men, and usually employed in agricultural works, are obscure to young readers. For their sakes we will explain some of them; and shall not be angry if old men profit by the explanation.

SOIL.—The surface-earth, of whatever ingredients it may be composed. It may be a clay-soil, a sand-soil, a calcareous soil, as the surface is composed of clay, or sand, or clay strongly mixed with lime, etc.

SUBSOIL.—The earth lying below the ordinary depth to which the plow or spade penetrate. Sometimes it has hardened by the running of the plow over it for a series of years; then it is called pan, as hard-pan, clay-pan, etc. It is sometimes of the same nature as the top-soil, as in clay-lands; in others it is a different earth; as when a coarse gravel underlies vegetable mold, or when clay lies beneath sandy soil.

SUBSOIL PLOWING.—In ordinary plowing, the share runs from five to seven inches deep. A plow has been constructed (called subsoil plow), to follow in the furrow, and break up from six to eight inches deeper—so that the whole plowing penetrates from ten to sixteen inches.

SUBSOIL PLOW.—A plow having a narrow “double share, or a small share on each side of the coulter, and no mold-board.” It is designed to break up and soften the subsoil, but not to bring it up to the top.

MOLD.—A soil in which decayed vegetable matter largely predominates over earths. Thus, leaf-mold is soil principally composed of rotten leaves; dung-mold, of dung reduced to a fine powdery matter; heath-mold, a black vegetable soil found in heath-lands; peat-mold, forest-mold, garden-mold, etc.

LOAM.—Clay, or any of the primitive earths, reduced to a mellow, friable state by intermixture of sand, or vegetable matter, is called loam. Clay lands well manured with sand, dung, or muck, are turned, gradually, to a loam.

ARGILLACEOUS.—From the Latin (argillaceus,) soil principally composed of clay.

ALUMINA OR ALUMINE.—Generally employed to signify pure clay. It is, chemically speaking, a metallic oxide; aluminium is the metallic base, and is an elementary substance.

It is generally known that the diamond is pure carbon (charcoal is carbon in an impure state), but it is not as generally known that the ruby and the sapphire, “two of the most beautiful gems with which we are acquainted, are composed almost solely of alumina,” or pure clay in a crystallized state.

SILICIOUS.—An earth composed largely of silex. Silex or silica is considered to be a primitive earth constituting flint, and containing most kinds of sands, and sandstones, etc. China or porcelain, ware is formed from silica and alumina united, i. e. from silicious sand and clay.

CALCAREOUS.—A soil into the composition of which lime enters largely. Limestone lands are calcareous. Pure clay manured freely with marl becomes calcareous, for marl is, mostly, clay and carbonate of lime.

ALLUVIAL.—Strictly speaking, alluvium or our alluvial soil, is a soil formed by causes yet in existence. Thus a bottom-land is formed by the wash of a river. It is usually a mixture of decayed vegetable matter and sand.

DILUVIAL.—A diluvial soil or deposit is one formed by causes no longer in existence. Thus a deposit by a deluge is termed diluvial. The word is derived from the Latin (diluvium), signifying a deluge.

The terms argillaceous, calcareous, silicious, alluvial and diluvial are constantly employed in all works which treat of husbandry.