Part 2

But it is said that this court decision follows the English Common law; and now being settled by a decision, it is not open for further consideration. In this progressive age nothing is settled until it is settled right. Judge Taney once judicially settled the status of the African race. The common law was held to forbid the bridging of navigable streams. Harbors could only be made where the water was salt and affected by the tides. The Dartmouth college decision was held to so cover railroad corporations as to shield them from legislative control. These have all been overturned by the march of events, and this Appellate court decision is not necessarily immortal. For fifty years the farmers of Illinois knew no such rule. The public roads have been improved by side ditches which dropped the water into the first depression. In 1873 there was placed in the road law a provision that a land owner may drain on the public road by giving timely notice, and this stands through all revisions. Blackstone in his commentaries does not class this kind of drainage as a nuisance or trespass to lower lands, but he does its opposite, where the lower man neglects to "scour" a ditch, and thus sets back the water to the harm of the upper man. If this court rule is common law, as claimed, then it may be further said that a rule for the dark ages when drainage was exceptional, is not necessarily the true rule, since drainage has become so large a part of good agriculture.

ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.--Early in the last session, bills were introduced into each House to overturn this court decision. These were defeated, but late in the session there passed with much unanimity a bill of the following title, which became a law: "An act to permit owners of land to construct drains for agricultural purposes." Sec. 1 of this act reads as follows: "That the owner or owners of land in this State shall be permitted to construct drains for agricultural purposes, only, into any natural water-course or any natural depression whereby the water will be carried into any natural water-course, or any drain on the public highway, if the road commissioners consent thereto, for the purpose of securing proper drainage to such land, without being liable in damages therefor to any other person or persons or corporation." This was intended to establish the right of "individual drainage."

But we are told that the courts will not respect this law, for the reason that it seeks to legalize trespass.

Here we join issue with our objectors and stand by this declaratory law. It embodies the general opinion and practice of the people; it is plainly conformable to the physical laws of nature and the requirements of civilization. Lands are held subject to laws thus grounded, and these considerations will not tolerate laws or decisions the very opposite.

These declarations are not much more radical than a declaration that we stand by the law of gravity as constitutional.

The public are busy in overturning this court decision by everywhere disregarding it. The few who stopped draining in deference to the court, have resumed under shelter of the statute. If all violators should be prosecuted with vigor, tile-making might decline, but courting would be lively. Courts and judges must be multiplied, and every lawyer in the State would have fat business for the next ten years. Some judge will soon give us a precedent in accordance with reason, and this will settle the matter as effectually as did one taste of the tree of knowledge reveal good and evil. It will soon be seen that individual interest is best promoted by general and free drainage--that presumption should be in its favor, and that one man should not be clothed with power to stop others from making improvements.

NEW LAWS.--The next legislative work on drainage should be to revise and consolidate the law. On some points the law is duplicate, and on one triplicate. It is generally demanded that the law shall be less cumbrous and more summary. This can be done to some extent when it shall be found that the courts favor drainage. So far they have had a very tender feeling for complaints. When drainage shall be acknowledged to be lawful, laudable, and necessary, like plowing, laws may be greatly simplified and made more effectual.

RIVER DISTRICTS.--Illinois being generally level, many of our inland streams waste a large amount of land by overflow and drift. Roads, crops, and bridges are insecure. To a large extent this may be remedied by straightening the channels, and hereafter keeping them in repair and clear of drift wood. If the lands along these rivers, which would receive benefits from this work, were made into a district and classified according to benefits, the burden on them for proper improvement would not be great, and it is believed that dollars would be realized for cents expended. This waste is growing worse year by year. Enough land could be reclaimed along the Kaskaskia, Little Wabash, Big Muddy, Saline, and Henderson to more than make a New England State. The State may well afford to do the engineering and give an enabling act, that the people interested may organize as they decide to improve their respective rivers. When so improved, it will become practicable to more effectually drain the district by lateral works.

Illinois being so generally level, and much of our black soil resting on clay, here is to be the favorite field for the ditcher and tile-maker. Invention has an inviting field, and already foreshadows rich results. Your association, though a private one, touches the public interest very broadly. You reveal and make possible new sources of wealth, which promises to agriculture a new era of development. You may do much to settle true principles and proper public policy, so that this great drainage enterprise may move along harmoniously. The law-maker and the tile-maker are necessary factors in this grand march of improvement.

Other valuable papers were read which we shall take occasion to publish at some future time.

BETTER MANAGEMENT NEEDED.

A little forethought on a farm is a good thing. It saves time, money, and much of the vexation that is liable to come without it. Like the watchman on a ship a good farmer must always be looking ahead. He must be quick in his judgment of what should be done at the present time, and he should have a good perception to show him the best thing to do for the future.

It is a mistaken idea that many possess who think there is no brain work needed on a farm. Farmers are usually looked upon as an ignorant class of people, especially by many of the city friends who often do not see the large, sympathizing feelings that lie hidden beneath the rough exterior of country people. They are in many cases better educated than they look to be, and they have a chance to use all the education they have at their command in the performance of the many and different kinds of duties that are to be done in the occupation of agriculture. There is much work to be done and it requires to be done at the right time to give a profitable return for the labor. To have things done properly a farm requires a good manager to eke out the labor force in the way it will do the greatest amount of work. Most farmers are willing to work, and take pleasure in doing so. All perform the harder parts of farming with an energy that is surpassed by no other laboring class in the world. Farmers deserve praise for this, I think, for it requires a great deal of pluck to work as hard as many of them do.

It is not, however, the actual hard manual labor that pays the best. The hardest part of the work may be done and there still remain enough to render the job far from complete. The minute parts of an occupation are the ones that distinguish it from others. These parts constitute trades. They require a special training to perform them, and the more perfectly they can be performed by any one, the more successful will that person be considered as a tradesman. A fine workman receives more pay for less work than one who does rougher work, simply because it is the minute parts that bring in the profit. This is so in the mechanical trades; it is so also in farming and yet many seem to be unaware of the fact. How numerous are those who leave out the minutia; mechanics learn a trade in a short time at least well enough to make a living by it. Many farmers have spent their whole lives upon farms and are still scarcely able to make a decent living; and the reason of it is because they have left undone those parts which would, if performed, bring in profit.

It is not the lack of an education that causes so much poor success. It is a lack of care in action and a want of observation in seeing. A man's experience is what makes him wise. He gains this experience by coming in contact with and observing those things which he meets.

In schools children are taught from the works of men. These works are arts, and since art is but the imitation of nature, all education is but imitation of that which the farmer boy has the chance of seeing before it becomes second hand. There is no place that has greater facilities to give observation its full scope than a farm. All farmers can, with the aid of the right kind of books and papers, be reasonably well educated, and most of them have a better comparative knowledge than they think they have. Many of the city cousins are superficially educated. City people can talk, but the greater part of the talk of many of them might be more properly called chattering. No farmer need feel below them because he is more retired and has a greater amount of modesty.

It is true, perhaps, that one can not seem more insignificant than he really is. Great men are constantly dying, but the living move on just the same. Each person's position seems valuable to few, and yet there is almost an entire dependence of man to man. Every one can not fill the highest positions, but they should make the best possible use of the faculties that are given them. If this is done there will be no regrets in the future in regard to what might have been done in the past. Life will then be thought worth living and much more happiness will cluster around it than now does.

There is no greater lack of education, perhaps, in agriculture than in the other vocations of man, and most farmers have a good share of well developed muscle to aid them in their work. The requisites are supplied. How many use them, at least in the way they should be used. All of the work could be done, but there is too small a number of good managers to oversee and carry out the performance of the little jobs that require to be performed at the right time.

There are some people in every business who, in the race for success, far outrun their competitors. This may be noticed on a farm. It takes but a short time to tell by the work a man does whether he is a good farmer or not. If a person is a good farmer and unites that quality to that of business management he will be successful in his attainments. Through success he will be honored by the members of his profession. He will be praised by all other people, and above all he will in the silent thoughts of his own mind have the satisfaction and pleasure of knowing that he is not a cipher in the vast human family. He will be pointed out as an example to those who are perhaps bowed down by discouragement. He will in all probability be called lucky when his success is really due to decisions that are arrived at by the experience and close observation of the past. If more farmers would be content to give their thoughts, as well as time, to farming, there would be more success and happiness in the occupation that depends above all others on good management.

S. LAWRENCE. QUINCY, ILL.

SEED CORN FROM SOUTH.

I am an interested reader of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, and knowing that thousands of farmers take the advice they get from its pages and act upon it, I wish to say that the suggestions of B. F. J., Champaign, Ill., regarding seed corn from portions of the country South of us will not do. Last spring hundreds of farmers in Western Iowa planted seed corn that came from Kansas and Nebraska, and the result was that none of that from Kansas ripened, while but little of the Nebraska seed did any better. It all grew nicely, but was still green and growing when the frost came. It may be claimed that much of that grown from native seed was no better, but it was better and considerable of it ripened, and from this native seed we have the only promise of seed for next year's planting. If farmers expect a good crop of corn they should not get seed from a southern latitude. No Iowa farmer would buy seed corn now that grew in Kentucky, Kansas, or Missouri. The only seed corn on which our farmers rely implicitly is that which they have gathered before frost came and hung up near the fire to be thoroughly dried before it froze. That corn will grow.

S. L. W. MANNING, IOWA.

FIELD AND FURROW.

All manures deposited by nature are left on or near the surface. The whole tendency of manure is to go down into the soil rather than to rise from it. There is probably very little if any loss of nitrogen from evaporation of manure, unless it is put in piles so as to foment. Rains and dews return to the soil as much ammonia in a year as is carried off in the atmosphere.

Rice contains more starch than either wheat, rye, barley, oats or corn. Of these grains oats carry the least starch, but by far the largest proportion of cellulose. In nitrogenous substances wheat leads, followed by barley, oats, rye and corn, while rice is most deficient. Corn leads in fat, and oats in relative proportion of water. Wheat leads in gum and rice in salt.

Convenience of farm buildings is an important aid to good farming, especially where much stock is kept and there are many chores. Water should always be provided in the barn-yard, the feeding boxes should be near where the feed is kept, and the buildings should not be very far removed from the house. If this results in more neatness about barns and barnyards than has been thought necessary, it will be another important advantage gained.

The President of the Elmira Farmers' Club tells the Husbandman that his crop of sorghum got caught by the frost, and too much injured to be of value as a sirup-producing substance. But he fed it to his cows which ate it greedily, and soon began to gain in milk. He thinks he got about as much profit from the crop as if it had been devoted to the original intent.

Governor Glick, in a short address before the State Board of Agriculture, last week, stated that Kansas history is the most remarkable on record; that in 1883 her people had more money to the head than any other people under heaven; that the State had received 60,000 immigrant population in 1883; that it will receive 160,000 in 1884; that in ten years it will have 2,000,000 people, and that thereafter Kansas will not care anything about bureaus of immigration--it will have people enough to work with, and the rest will come as fast as they are needed.

Farmers' Call: The experiments conducted during the last season at the Missouri State Agricultural College fully demonstrate the advisability of mulching potatoes. We believe every experiment so far reported gave a similar result. The cost of the materials for mulching is usually very small, leaves or straw being plentiful and cheap upon the farm. The materials manure the ground; and mulching saves hoeing. The potato requires a cooler climate and moister soil than our latitude affords. Mulching tends to secure both. The result in every case has been largely increased yields of superior quality.

The old saying, no grass no cattle, no cattle no manure, no manure no crops, is as true to-day as when first spoken. Grass takes care of him who sows it. The meadow is the master mine of wealth. Strong meadows fill big barns. Fat pastures make fat pockets. The acre that will carry a steer carries wealth. Flush pastures make fat stock. Heavy meadows make happy farmers. Up to my ears in soft grass laughs the fat ox. Sweet pastures make sound butter. Soft hay makes strong wool. These are some of the maxims of the meadow. The grass seed to sow depends upon the soil and here every man must be his own judge. Not every farmer, however, knows the grass adapted to his soil. If he does and seeds by the bushel, or other measures, he is apt to be misled.

Including millet and Hungarian there were in Kansas this year 3,730,150 acres of land devoted to the raising of hay. The yield per acre was 1.61 tons, or a total product of 6,002,576 tons. None of the tame grasses have as yet attained a large area in this State, the most extensively grown being timothy which has an area of 95,844 acres. The great bulk of the grass lands mentioned above is the prairie, protected by fence. The eastern third of the State probably contains four fifths of the tame grass area. The question of the growing of tame grasses in Kansas is receiving much attention from farmers, it becoming of vast importance as people increase the number of their farm animals. The question no doubt will be satisfactorily solved within a few years, and the tame grass area will increase to its just proportion.

The agricultural changes in Great Britain continue to be of a marked character. The area devoted to grain crops the past year was 8,618,675 acres, which is 214,705 acres less than in 1882. Potatoes were planted on 543,000 acres, and turnips and Swedes on 2,029,000 acres--all showing a slight increase; but mangolds, vetches and other green crops have declined by 21,000 acres on the figures for the previous year. Clover and the grasses show an increase of 58,500 acres. The change from tilth to permanent pasturage is again conspicuous, there being 15,065,300 acres as compared with 14,821,600 last year. Ten years ago grass covered 13,000,000 acres, while arable land has fallen during that period from 18,186,000 to 17,319,000 acres. Orchards are on the increase, and also market gardening. In the matter of live stock there is an improvement which leads to the hope that the heavy losses of recent years will be made up.

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Illinois Central Railroad.

The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents. Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against them.

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FARM MACHINERY, Etc.

NICHOLS & MURPHY'S

CENTENNIAL WIND MILL.

Contains all the valuable features of his old "Nichols' Mills" with none of their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct scientific principles so as to govern perfectly.

ALL VANES

Are mechanical devices used to overcome the mechanical defect of forcing the wheel to run out of its natural position.

A wind wheel becomes its own vane if no vane if used, hence, vanes--save only to balance the wheel--are useless for good, and are only useful to help blow the mill down.

This mill will stand a heavier wind, run steadier, last longer, and crow louder than any other mill built. Our confidence in the mill warrants us in offering the first mill in each county where we have no agent, at agents' prices and on 30 days' trial.

Our power mills have 25 per cent more power than any mill with a vane. We have also a superior feed mill adapted to wind or other power. It is cheap, durable, efficient. For circulars, mills, and agencies, address

NICHOLS & MURPHY, ELGIN, ILL.

(Successors to the Batavia Manf. Co., of Batavia, Ill.)

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Sawing Made Easy

Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine!

Sent on 30 Days test Trial.

A Great Saving of Labor & Money.

A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage, Mich. writes, "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE. I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes." For sawing logs into suitable lengths for family stove-wood, and all sorts of log-cutting, it is peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, FREE. AGENTS WANTED. Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 N. Randolph St., Chicago, Ill.

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CHICAGO SCALE CO.

2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40. 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included.

240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5.

The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb. $3.

300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE.

FORGES, TOOLS, &c.

BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10,

40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10.

Farmers save time and money doing odd jobs.

Blowers, Anvils, Vices & Other Articles

AT LOWEST PRICES, WHOLESALE & RETAIL.

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THE PROFIT FARM BOILER

is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping boiler; empties its kettle in a minute. OVER 5,000 IN USE; Cook your corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular. D. R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois.

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HOOSIER AUGER TILE MILL.

FOR PRICES AND CIRCULARS, ADDRESS NOLAN, MADDEN & CO., RUSHVILLE, IND.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

EVAPORATING FRUIT

FULL TREATISE on improved methods, yields, profits, prices and general statistics, free.

AMERICAN M'FG CO. WAYNESBORO FRANKLIN COUNTY, PA.

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SELF CURE FREE

Nervous Lost Weakness Debility Manhood and Decay

A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired.) Druggists can fill it. Address

DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO.

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40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks, $1. GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N.Y.

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REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._

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LIVESTOCK DEPARTMENT.

Stockmen. Write for Your Paper.

American breeders imported from Scotland 850 head of polled cattle last year.

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W. C. Vandercook, Secretary of the Northern Illinois Merino Sheep Breeders' Association, recently took 900 Merino sheep to his recently purchased ranch in Norton county, Kansas.

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Mr. Estill, of Estill, Mo., passed through Chicago, a few days ago, with forty head of Angus-Aberdeen and Hereford cattle. Estill & Elliott now own one of the best polled herds in the West.

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The second regular annual meeting of the Kansas State Short-horn Breeders' Association will be held in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, Topeka, Kan., during February 12 and 13, beginning at 7 P. M. of the 12th.

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The seventh annual meeting of the Dutch-Fresian Association of America will be held at the Butterfield House, Utica, N. Y., February 6, 1884. Essays and addresses are expected from a number of distinguished stock breeders.

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The Lafayette County Thoroughbred Live Stock Breeders' Association was recently organized at Higginsville, Mo. They will hold annual public sales and otherwise advance the improved stock interest. Their first sale will be held at Higginsville, October 15 and 16, 1884.

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