Answers to Correspondents.

J. C. McConaughy, Rochelle, Ill.—1. How can I secure a blue-grass pasture? 2. How much seed to acre? 3. Can blue-grass be grown successfully mixed with other grasses? 4. What season and what soil is best adapted to secure a good catch? 5. Can it be grown on low, wet land?

Answer.—1. There are almost as many ways to obtain a blue-grass pasture as there are men who undertake the job, though essentially the practices are alike. The usual method is to sow the seed in the spring or fall, either alone or with clover or timothy. 2. The seed is very light and chaffy, and weighs only fourteen pounds to the bushel, and the amount sown varies from five to seven pounds to the acre. 3. Yes, though after a few years blue-grass, on a true blue-grass soil, roots every other grass out and reigns with a divided empire with white clover. 4. Any good corn or wheat soil will produce good blue-grass—the usual method of obtaining a blue-grass pasture is as follows: To one bushel of good timothy seed one quart of red clover is added, and this quantity is made to cover from five to six acres. The seeding may be done in the fall with fall grain, in the spring with oats, or on stubble or wheat land on the snow in February. After, in the month of August from a peck to a half bushel of blue-grass is sown upon the young timothy and clover. But little or nothing can be seen of the blue-grass for the first year and it does not show vigorously until the third year. Thereafter if the soil is a true blue-grass one and the land is pastured, blue-grass and white clover dominate to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps the surest way to obtain a stand of timothy and thereafter a set of blue-grass, is to prepare the land carefully and sow rye in October. On this sow timothy and red clover as above on the snow in February or March; pasture the rye, but not too closely, to 15th of May. Harvest the rye at the usual time, and the yield will be all the better for the pasturing, and sow the blue-grass seed on the stubble in August. 5. No, but red top will in spite of your best efforts to the contrary unless you till and thoroughly break up the land.

John Zimmerman, Cameron, Mo.—1. Has setting trees on a fence line as posts for barb-wire been a success? 2. If so what kind of tree is the best? 3. Will the hardy catalpa do, if so what distance apart?

Answer.—1. Barb-wire has not been introduced and used long enough for trees set for the purpose of posts to grow to a sufficient size. But in many cases aged Osage orange hedges, which have been suffered to grow up, have been thinned out so as to leave a tree every ten, twelve, or fifteen feet, and on these barbed-wires have been strung and made a fence, which so far has proved satisfactory. The same success was obtained where fruit and shade trees standing in a line have had barbed-wire attached to them. But the precaution must be taken to nail a strip—a common fence picket will answer—to the tree and then the barb-wire to that. If this is not done, and the wire is fastened by a staple to the tree, the wood soon overgrows, cracks and increases the strain on the wire, damages the tree and spoils the fence. 2. Almost any fast growing tree will do, but hard wood varieties are preferable. 3. The hardy catalpa may do, but for low land we would just as soon have the common willow. Eight feet apart is a good distance. The wires may be fastened to these when they have acquired a diameter of four or five inches, and later every other post may be removed. For high and dry land in your latitude one Osage orange is worth a half-dozen catalpas, because it is just as easily grown—and when grown it furnishes the strongest and most lasting timber known. We may add here, that where a fence is wanted across sloughs, or through permanently wet or moist land, posts large enough for barbed-wire may be grown in a couple of years or so—this by cutting stakes six or seven feet long and from three to five inches in diameter from the common willow, and setting them in March. The stakes require attention the first summer, in case of dry weather or drouth, but nothing more than that the moist earth shall be pressed up against them to prevent the young roots from drying out.

M. D. Vincent, Springfield, Mo.—1. Can you tell me how badly oranges were frosted during the late cold spell in Florida? 2. Is there a record of colder weather at Charleston, S. C., Savannah, Ga., if so when was it?

Answer.—1. It is hard getting at the facts. One report is that neither oranges nor the trees were injured at Palatka, fifty miles south of Jacksonville, while another just as credible says the fruit was badly frozen on the trees as far south as Enterprise, 100 miles south of Jacksonville. The probabilities are, that there was a good deal of damage done to fruit on the trees, but no permanent or serious injury to the orchards. 2. The mercury may not have been lower for 100 years at Charleston or Savannah than the late cold spell, but during the winter of 1834-35 the weather was so severe the orange trees were killed to the ground 100 miles south of Jacksonville. Snow to a foot in depth fell at Millidgeville, Ga., Lat. 33, and several inches over all northern Florida. Some apprehensions are felt that these southern sections are not safe from severe frosts for this winter and the next, since it is pretty well known that these extreme cold periods return about every half-century—the winters of near fifty and one hundred years ago having been made remarkable by terribly severe and protracted cold.

J. H. J. Watertown, Wis.—Give us the best remedy for chillblains?

Answer.—Tincture of iodine painted over the parts; or 10 grains of salicylic acid extended in an ounce of half water and half alcohol. Both to be applied with great caution, and largely diluted where the skin is broken and ulcers have formed.

Charles C. Peters, Olney, Ill.—If you were about to plant an orchard on levelish, but at the same time naturally well drained land, would you advise throwing up ridges as the common custom is in some sections?

Answer.—It might be advantageous to throw up ridges so as to secure permanent moisture; but the trees should be set in the depression between them instead of on the ridges.

Thoroughbred, Lexington, Ky.—There is a belief or an opinion current among a class of breeders, always ready to accept and experiment with new fangled notions, that the draft breeds imported from abroad, especially the high priced French horses, are fed from birth on a more or less regular ration of bone or flesh meal. This they claim is for the purpose of developing bone and muscle. What do you know of the facts?

Answer.—Not much. Some of the foreign journals contain accounts of experiments in feeding soluble phosphates of lime, but no two agree on results, except that when the salt is judicially fed, no harm is done. The subject is worthy of investigation and especially by Kentucky breeders, since it would establish the claim that their soil, being especially rich in the phosphates and nitrogen, produces grain, hay, and forage of superior strength for feeding purposes, which appear again, in their high bred stock of horses, sheep, and cattle.

The fourth National Agricultural Convention, under the auspices of the American Agricultural Association, will be held at the Grand Central Hotel, New York City, Wednesday and Thursday, February 6th and 7th, 1884. Addresses will be delivered and papers read by leading thinkers and writers on topics of general interest, and all identified with agriculture and kindred pursuits are cordially invited to be present and participate in the proceedings. Delegates will be present from all sections of the country, and arrangements for reduced rates of fare are being made with the railroads leading into New York. The annual meeting for the election of officers and the transaction of other business, including the matter of a national agricultural fair, will be held at 12 M. of the first day of the Convention.