MILKING COWS.—Let them be milked regularly without regard to weather. A careless girl will, if not watched, milk irregularly, and what is worse, leave the cow _unstript_. The morning work presses, or the cold pinches, or she is in haste, at night, to go a visiting, or some one of a hundred other reasons tempt her to milk out the full flow, and leave the strippings. A cow so abused will be injured, in a short time, so much, that all the care in the world will not bring her back again.
See that stock are treated with gentleness and patience. It is a shame to abuse a kind and docile animal, and it is useless to thrash those that are not so. In either case, kindness is the best policy. A man who is brutal to cattle is more of a beast than they are. We have seen many a man who, if he had two more legs, would not fetch the price of a stock-hog.
We saw recently a potato which grew at the depth of _twenty-five feet_ below the surface of the earth. This is an extraordinary depth. Few things planted at that depth would vegetate. The fact in this case is unquestionable. The top was terminated by a cluster of _blossoms_, and the potatoes were of the size of small hickory-nuts.
P. S. Another fact, which like to have been omitted in this account, is, that it grew at the bottom of an _open well_.
The practice of sowing grains for fodder has been practised with great success. MILLET is sown in May, June, or July, at the rate of three pecks of seed to the acre. It is, usually, ready for the scythe in about ninety days. Thick sowing is best. Cut when the grain is fairly out of the milk, and cure it like hay. Four tons is a fair yield—two tons is a small crop.
INDIAN CORN should be sown broadcast at the rate of four to five bushels to the acre. Corn belongs to the tribe of _grasses_. Cultivating it for the grain, in rows, with every stimulant of air, light, and manure, develops the stalk almost to a tree form. When sown for fodder, the object should be to produce it, as nearly as possible, like a _grass_. Thick sowing will tend to do it, and each stalk being small and tender, the crop will be easily masticated by cattle. By good management six or eight tons may be cut to the acre—cutting twice in the season. The first mowing should be about the period of _silking_. The next, whenever the shoots have grown again to a proper size. If but one mowing is intended, it should be permitted to stand a week or two later than when two crops are to be taken. For, all plants prepare the most of nutritious juices at the period of their _fruiting_. Indian corn is the richest in saccharine matter at about the time its grain is turning from a milky to a mealy state. Cattle will eat either of the above grains, treated like a grass crop, with great avidity; and every one knows that it is desirable to give them a _change_ of food through the winter.