Potatoes. The yield per acre, twenty years ago, was from 200 to 300 bushels, but more recently the blight has made such havoc that farmers. have been glad to get enough which would keep through the winter for home consumption and for seeding. Not much improvement was realized till this year; yield this year, from 100 to 200 bushels of firstrate potatoes; cost of raising, about from 15 to 20 cents. It is hoped that the trouble is over, and wheat and potatoes are destined to take rank again among the profitable crops of Maine. The best kinds for a crop are the white, pink-eye, and the peach-blow; and these are all good table varieties. The blue and the white Christie, the Butman, the lady's finger, and the Carney, are good table varieties, but need much richer ground. As yet, perhaps, potatoes should not be manured much, as they are more likely to rot on manured land. The best way is to plant on good healthy soil, about 3 feet by 2 or 3 feet apart; I prefer 3. Hoe once or twice, but all before the tubers form.

Fruits. Much more attention paid than formerly; grafting is very common, and many varieties are sent to market, and a fair business will be done as soon as we have a railroad.

Apples are a profitable crop when there is a market; but apples and most of the fruits are raised by every one, and the market is too full. The value of apples for stock feeding is not known here, and thousands of bushels of apples have been nearly wasted this year, which the farmers could not be persuaded to pick and store for cattle and hogs, although fodder is very scarce on account of drought. It is believed that good fair apples are worth about as much as potatoes; mixed, the proportion of one part apples to two of potatoes, quite as good as all potatoes. Hogs have fattened on raw apples this year. The blight on apple-trees is seldom seen. Pears and peaches are not cultivated to much extent. Gypsum thrown on or about fruit-trees is very good, to keep them lively and prevent casting fruit. Grafting, budding, &c., I am not personally conversant with.

Manures.-Manures should be piled under cover, and covered with earth or leeched ashes. Much is done with swamp-mud, and many other materials, but none of them succeed to the best profit without some process of fermentation, as Bommer's plan, or some other. Lime and plaster have done well, but farmers in general lack faith, because it does not show its effects immediately. The geological features of Maine, more especially the northern part, present a great variety of soil, distinctly marked. Appearances go far in justification of the belief that the whole country has been flooded by some revolutions of nature, and that the waters of the western lakes have been precipitated over the whole face of Northern Maine, from the Highlands to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all along the seaboard. Consequently, we have very little vegetable mould; and while Canada West and territory beyond the lakes have from one to three feet of vegetable mould, we have not more than double that of inches. Thus, we have sand-hills and clay-fields, and seldom one without the other. This is beginning to attract the attention of the farmer, and several highly remunerati experiments have been made of mixing sors. Clay to sand, and sand to clay, will, eventually, do much to supply the place of manure; and the trial will, I think, far transcend the most sanguine expectations.

The crops have been very good this season, and had it not been dry in summer, would have been unusually productive. Wheat is good, as also corn, rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, &c. Turnips were injured by the worms this year and last, which may be prevented by putting a little fine salt at the roots, though attended with labor; dipping the roots in salt when set will help them. Wild fruits abundant, and apples as plenty as advice-had for packing, in any quantity; many thousand bushels wasted on the ground.

With respectful esteem, yours truly,

To the COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS.

EUSEBIUS WESTON.

NEW SHARON, FRANKLIN COUNTY, MAINE,
12th mo., 4th, 1852.

SIR: Thy Circular, under date of Sth mo., 1852, was duly received, and in compliance with the request contained therein, I forward the following particulars, viz:

Wheat.-Average product per acre, eighteen bushels. Time of seeding, on or near the twentieth of fifth month. Time of harvesting, about the twentieth of ninth month. Seed prepared by washing in pickle and mixing with a small amount of lime.

Plough once in the fall, about eight inches, and use the cultivator to mellow it in the spring. Yield per acre upon the increase. System of rotation: oats, corn, or potatoes, and wheat. Remedies for Hession thes and weevils: late sowing, and lime and ashes sown broadcast when the wheat has attained a growth of six inches. Average price in our market. one dollar. Grass seeds, Timethy, and clover mixed and sown with the wheat.

Corn.-Average product per acre, thirty bushels; cost of pro-lucing per bus el, fifty cents. Best system of culture: green manure, ploughed under in the fall, and old manure put in the hill to give the crop an early start. Hoed twice or three times, according to the season. Best method of feeding, ground and cocked. Method of preparing soil, ploughing in fall and again in the spring, and harrowing fine. Rows three feet and a half distant, stalks three feet.

Outs.-Average yield per acre, twenty bushels. Quantity of seed, two and a half to three bushels per acre.

Barley.—Do not raise it. Rije-ditto.

Pas.-Planted with potatoes, four in a hill. Average yield per acre, five bushels. Not cultivated for renovation of land. Beans with corn between the hills, five in each hill; average yield, seven to eight bushels per acre.

Clover and Grasses.-Average yield per acre, usually about one ton. Quantity of seed used, eight poi's of clover and one pek of Timothy raere. Have ne, experiented upon meadow land. Cost of produc n, four deliais p. 1 tell.

Dary Du, bandy.-Average yearly product per cow, one cwt, cheese and thirty pounds of butter.

Respectfully,

To the COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS.

FREDERICK SWAN.

PERRY, WASHINGTON COUNTY, MAINE,
January 26, 1853.

SIR: In reply to the Agricultural Circular, I will state only my own experience with a few of the subjects therein named. Wheat is not much cultivated, and no systematic experiments are within my knowledge as to the increased product from the use of guano. It is usually made to follow the potato or turnip crop, and seldom gets any manure other than what was applied to the previous crop. It is as sure as most crops, yielding on an average 15 bushels per acre, sown with Timothy, red clover, and fowl meadow grasses. Corn-we raise none.

Average yield of oats, fifty bushels upon pasture land or green-swardof barley, thirty bushels. As to the cost of producing wool, I have found that, with any breeds we have here, a pound of fine Merino wool costs less than a pound of coarse wool. From some experiments in porkraising (incomplete as yet) I am led to suppose that five pounds of grain are required to make a pound of pork.

In the cultivation of root crops, especially rutabaga, I have found guano the cheapest and best manure. I have tried it side by side with manure from the barn cellar and find it fully equal, at a cost not exceeding that of carting the manure when the transportation is a quarter of a mile.

Six hundred pounds applied to an acre gave eight hundred bushels rutabaga, where without it there probably would not have been two hundred; a few rows left without guano for comparison, gave nothing at all. The cultivation of this crop is increasing, but not so fast as it ought. Where we cannot raise corn, this may, to some degree, supply its place. Beef may be made to good advantage, two bushels a day to a fatting ox, and he will require but very little hay, and will fatten fast; a half bushel a day, with straw, for cows or young cattle, I find very well takes the place of hay; and for store hogs, half a bushel to each, fed raw, will keep them in good condition.

liish potatoes, our great staple, rot as bad as ever in most places, while some localities entirely escape.

Fruit is only beginning to receive attention; yet it may be made the most profitable crop of the country. Apples may be produced here good enough, as we have examples to show, and in sufficient quantity, to be a source of profit Plums succeed as well as anywhere; cherries also.

I consider the best method of grafting to be the following: Take up the tree at a year old, cut it off at the ground with a sloping cut an inch long; match the scion to it nicely, and tie with cotton wicking; put no wax or anything else around the splice, but set out immediately burying the splice two or three inches in the ground. This method performed as early as the young trees can be got up, will prove successful with apple, plum, or cherry, in most cases. I have some fine plums which are four years from a graft in the root, and bore fruit last year.

Manures.-I have not been able to perceive any beneficial effects from line used in any way, or from plaster used alone; but mixed with guano in equal parts, I think it tends to retain the fertilizing principle, so tha the crops get more of it.

Gero, at three hundred pounds per acre, gave a yield of potatoes equal to that given by twelve cerds barn manure.

Respectfully,

WILLIAM D. DANA.

SIR: I have been in the business of rearing and marketing mules for many years; which I have marketed principally in New Haven, Connecticut, and in the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania; which animal, in the latter two States, is much in use, I sold mules there twenty-eight years ago last fall, which were two years old; and I saw some of them two years ago, which were fat; and the owners said they were as good

as ever.

I have conversed with many aged gentlemen, who have used mules for fifty years, and with some who then had mules in their possession which they represented to be forty-two years of age. I have been also told of one owned in Pennsylvania that was sixty-three years old. I am fully satisfied, from my own observation, that mules live to double the age of horses; that it costs but about one-half as much to keep them, and are not one-half so subject to disease; consequently, the saving would be great; and I think they ought to be used for draught in all countries, instead of horses.

Such complaints as heaves, spavin, &c., I have never yet seen or heard of about a mule; and I have raised hundreds and seen thousands; which con plants are very prevalent among horses.

I give it as my opinion, that the average age of mules is thirty five or forty years. They are much easier broken than horses, if treated with kindness.

It is true, there seems to be a genral prejudice existing with people agamst this animal; and it is expected that they will kick or kill everybody who has much to do with them; and when people undertake to break

them, it is thought to be the first requisite to tie them up and give them a sound drubbing, not for anything the innocent creatures have done, but for something they are expected to do; and being animals that are intelligent, they rightly become dissatisfied with such treatment, and, of course, will show resentment. While engaged in selling, I have helped harness up a great many taken from the drove, without any previous training, and have driven them in a wagon containing several persons besides myself, and I never saw one contrary or refuse to go off immediately. They are much more intelligent and tractable than horses, and their attachment is much stronger, if well treated. The foal is carried easier by the mare, and reduces her less, both before and after birth.

They can always be sold for ready cash at the South; and, taking them on an average, and at any age, will bring more money here at the North than horses.

Therefore, I invite my fellow farmers to examine this subject, and take a greater interest in rearing mules. They are a cash article, and a very useful and profitable animal; and it would save the North millions of dollars were they in as common use here as at the South.

The mule is adapted to labor at a younger age than the horse; and experience is all that is wanting to convince the people of the North of the great advantages that would accrue from bringing these animals into general use at home, and from rearing them more abundantly for the Southern markets.

S. SMITH.

RUTLAND, RUTLAND COUNTY, VT.,

December, 1852.

SIR: I had the honor of receiving the Circular from the Patent Office, through the politeness of Hon. S. Foot, and take this opportunity to reply as far as I am able to the questions therein; and if by so doing I can add anything to the Agricultural Report forthcoming, and contribute my mite to the worthy cause of distributing, through the Patent Office Report, general agricultural information, I shall be recompensed.

Rutland county lies between 43° 18′ and 45° 50' north latitude, and contains almost all varieties of soils, consisting of clays of all kinds. sands of all qualities, muck, hard-pan, alluvial loams, and slate, and a mixture of these in every possible way. Of rock, the limestone formation is predominant; marble quarries inexhaustible, from the fine, clear, white (fully equal to the Italian) to coarse grades, and of a'l colors; slate is found equal to any in the world, for writing, for roofing, and other purposes, not forgetting the soft white slate-pencil quarries; the hard head, the flint and rock of primitive formation. Of soils, there is the most of the loams; a mixture of loam and sand is the best soil for grains; clay is the best for grass if there is plenty of wet, and slate for wheat; yet all crops raised here are made to prosper often on every variety of soil. Of crops, hay is the most important, treble the value of all the rest. Good farmers so manage the land as to make it produce the greatest amount of hay; keeping stock is the main business. Corn is the next crop in importance; then oats; then Irish potatoes, peas, beans,.