Grass for Hogs.

With plenty of milk and mill-feed to mix with the corn, good hogs may be grown without grass. But with corn alone, the task of growing and fattening a hog without grass costs more than the hog is worth.

To make hog-growing profitable to the farmer, he must have grass. In the older States where the tame grasses are plenty, it is a very thoughtless farmer who has not his hog pasture. But out here in Kansas and Nebraska, where we have plenty of corn, but no grass, except the wild varieties, the most enterprising of us are at our wits' ends. Hogs will eat these wild grasses while tender in the spring, and, even without corn, will grow long, tall, and wonderfully lean, and in the fall will fatten much more readily than hogs grown on corn. But fattening the lean hogs takes too much corn. We must have a grass that the hogs will relish, and on which they will both grow and fatten. They will do this on clover, orchard grass, bluegrass, and other tame grasses. But we have not got any of these, nor do we know how to get them. Hundreds of bushels of tame grass seeds are sold every spring by our implement dealers. A few have succeeded in getting some grass, but nine out of ten lose their seed. We either do not know how to grow it, or the seed is not good, or the soil is too new. The truth, perhaps, lies a little in all three. Our agricultural colleges are claiming to have success with these grasses, and their experience would be of value to the farmers if these reports could ever reach them. Not one farmer in a hundred ever sees them. I know of but one farmer of sufficient political influence to receive these reports through the mails. The rest of us can get them for the asking. But not many of us know this, fewer know whom to ask, and still fewer ask. I do not know a farmer that orders a single copy. Farmers, living about our county towns, and doing their trading there, and having leisure enough to loaf about the public offices, and curiosity enough to scratch through the dust-covered piles of old papers and rubbish in the corner, are usually rewarded by finding a copy of these valuable reports. But we, who live far away from the county seat, do our farming without this aid, and mostly without any knowledge of their existence. This looks like a lamentable state of agricultural stupidity. Notwithstanding this dark picture we would all read, and be greatly profited by these reports, if they were laid on our tables.

If it pays to expend so much labor and money in preparing these reports and sending them half way to the people, would it not be wise to expend a little more and complete the journey, by making it the duty of the assessor to leave a copy on every farmer's table? Compulsory education.

As an explanation of much of the above, it must be remembered that we are nearly all recently from the East, that we have brought with us our Eastern experience, education, literature, and household gods; and that not until we have tried things in our old Eastern ways and failed, do we realize that we exist under a new and different state of things and slowly begin to open our eyes to the existence of Western agricultural reports and papers giving us the conditions on which the best results have been obtained.

There will be more grass seed planted this spring than ever before, and the farmers will be guided by the conditions on which the best successes seem to have been obtained. But this seeding will not give us much grass for this coming summer. What must we do? I write for our Western farmers who have no clover, orchard grass, blue grass, but have in their cultivated fields.

CRAB GRASS.

This grass, the most troublesome weed of the West, smothering our gardens and converting our growing corn-fields into dense meadows, makes the best hog pasture in the world, while it lasts. Put hogs into a pasture containing all the tame grasses, with one corner in crab grass, and the last named grass will all be consumed before the other grasses are touched.

Not only do they prefer it to any other grass, but on no grass will they thrive and fatten so well. Last spring I fenced twelve acres of old stalk ground well seeded to crab grass. With the first of June the field was green, and from then until frost pastured sixty large hogs, which, with one ear of corn each, morning and evening, became thoroughly fat. These were the finest and cheapest hogs I ever grew.

This grass is in its glory from June till frosts. By sowing the ground early in oats, this will pasture the hogs until June, when the crab grass will occupy all the ground, and carry them through in splendid condition, and fat them, with an ear of[jk] corn morning and evening.

A. D. Lee. Centerville, Kan.

Note.—Many of our readers may be unfamiliar with the variety of grass spoken of by our correspondent. It is known as crop grass, crab grass, wire grass, and crow's foot (Eleusine Indica). Flint describes it as follows: Stems ascending, flattened, branching at the base; spikes, two to five, greenish. It is an annual and flowers through the season, growing from eight to fifteen inches high, and forming a fine green carpeting in lawns and yards. It is indigenous in Mississippi, Alabama, and adjoining States, and serves for hay, grazing, and turning under as a fertilizer. It grows there with such luxuriance, in many sections, as never to require sowing, and yields a good crop where many of the more Northern grasses would fail.—[Ed. P. F.]