furniture, will bring about six dollars per thousand; dry maple wood is now worth three dollars and fifty cents per cord; oak about three dollars, and basswood about one dollar and fifty cents; the latter is mostly sold to manufacturers for engine fuel. We use a horse drag saw to cut up such logs as are unfit for the mill, and too knotty and rough to split into four foot wood. When cut into stove length almost anything can be split. The brush must be piled in high, close heaps, as a properly made heap will all burn up, while a straggling heap will be difficult to set on fire, and will, when burnt, leave a large ring of chevaux-de-frise, which must be piled over again in order to get it to burn. Get off all the wood, rails and logs by the middle of April, as the first dry spell of spring will generally give as good a burn as can be obtained later in the season. The brush may not be so dry, but the leaves, grass and weeds lie loose and burn readily, while later in the season they get beaten down by rains, and grass and weeds grow, which will check the spread of the fire.

A good, thorough burn is greatly to be desired. Before setting the fires, get some barrels of water arranged in convenient places for protecting fences, buildings or wood, and be sure not to burn until this is done. Choose a dry time, with a strong wind blowing in the right direction, for safety; get some help on hand and then set the fires. There are ten chances to one that you will burn up something that you don't want to, even with all these precautions. The brush piles must be watched, as a little labor in throwing on the straggling brush from the windward side, while the ground is hot and the embers still burning, will help greatly. The log piles must be kept rolled together, and it is well to rake the chips and trash around the stumps, as a little scorching will hinder many of them from sprouting. The ashes must be scattered from where the largest piles are burned.

It is very important to kill the stumps as soon as possible after chopping off the timber. If left without attention there will soon be a dense second growth requiring much labor to remove it. If clean and thorough work is made at first by close pasturing or diligently sprouting the stumps until they are killed, the land can be plowed sooner than one would suppose. There is no plant that can survive a year's deprivation of foliage.

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The use to be made of the land will depend of course necessities of the owner. If the timber was so close as to keep out the grasses, a good meadow can be had by sowing to oats as early in the spring as possible and seeding with timothy. It is of no use to sow clover on such land, except for pasture. It has often proved a better way, to sow with wheat in the fall and seed; a good crop is often raised in this way. A heavy A harrow with inch square teeth is best for harrowing the land. This method will give a snoother bottom that can be obtained after ploughing. It is best to avoid ploughing such land if possible. It is embarrassing to have a horse get both hind feet into a hollow stump and then fall down, as has happened with me. The average man will get very tired by the time he has pulled his plough five hundred times out of places where it took a strong team to pull it in. If new land is well seeded to timothy it can be mowed, but the best use of all is to use it for pasture. Stock will eat off the sprouts from the stumps, and so kill them without the annual use of the axe. I cannot too much emphasize the importance of close pasturing. I cleared off a piece of land eight years ago which was enclosed so as to exclude stock, and some of the old basswood stumps which are rotted off to the ground are still seeding up sprouts. On another piece which was pastured, nothing survived the second year. If animals neglect the sprouts through an abundance of other feed, in the spring, so that they become too tough to be eaten off, they can be cut after harvest, and the stock will take care of the later growths. The pignut and butternut sprouts must be attended to with the axe as animals generally refuse to eat them. The work of sprouting stumps should be done with care. The sprout should be split from the stump, taking with it as large a piece of the bark as possible. It will never be killed by cutting it off above where it joins the stump. So long as the sprouts are left growing, they will keep a portion of the roots alive, and it will be those roots which run near the surface and interfere the most with the plough.

Our new land has generally to pass through what we call the thistle stage. The bull thistle seed which we see floating in the wind every fall, lodges quite abundantly in the timber, and

when we cut it off the ground is well seeded by them. I know of no way of getting rid of them. They grow very luxuriantly in the leaf mould, but are not very noticeable after the second year.

In three or four years the smaller stumps will begin to come out, and in six or seven years the ground can be very well ploughed, as all but some of the more durable stumps can be removed. In this way the land will have been profitably used, and much wear aud tear of temper and teams will be avoided.

We ought to remove the stumps from our fields as rapidly as possible. They form hiding places for vermin, and become centres of dispersion for many kinds of foul seed. They interfere with all the operations of farming. We need not wait until they are entirely rotted out. Their period may be hastened in many ways. We do not wait, however, until the stumps are all removed, before we introduce the mower and reaper. If the bottom is well cleaned up, and none but stumps which show plainly in the grain are present, we get along very well with machinery, by putting a man with cradle or scythe, as the case may be, at work with the machine to clear its way around them.

There are machines made that are very powerful and effective in pulling grubs and stumps, but it takes too much time to handle them, and they often pull up an amount of dirt and sod which it is difficult to manage. There is nothing so profitable for us as to let a stump alone until its hold of the earth is greatly weakened by the rotting of its smaller roots. A stump which will jar in its roots by a heavy blow from an axe can generally be removed with but little labor. A strong team will often tip it over. Where the top breaks off, the remaining portion can often be split through the centre and one-half turned out by prying over the other half. A beetle and wedge can be used to split the more refractory. A twelve-foot lever planted under some projecting root will sometimes start a very formidable stump, and help a team in tipping it over. A few blows from a heavy sledge will often knock a stump all to pieces.

The best stump puller I have ever used is made by standing a strong lever, ten feet long, upright by the stump, and wrapping it to the stump with a chain. Another chain passes from the top

of the lever to the axle of a wagon or cart, which is loaded with stone enough to keep it from lifting. The team then draws, and is assisted, if necessary, by the digging, prying and cutting off of roots. It is astonishing what stumps can be taken out in this way. A man soon learns to tell by striking a stump whether it is worth while to attempt it or not. A stump which would require more than ten minutes to extract had better be left until the next occasion. The time to work at them is either early in the spring or late in the fall, when the ground is wet. It needs two or three persons to work to advantage. We often see a Wandering Jew of an article in the papers, saying that saltpetre or kerosene can be used to advantage in burning them out. I have tried them, in both green stumps and dry, without the least perceptible benefit.

When stumps get old and rotten, there often comes a dry time in which they can be burned to advantage. Such stumps as can be pried out can be used in burning others. I burned a hundred stumps from an acre of land by the use of sheet-iron stoves. I made four or five of them, of different sizes, out of some old stovepipe, joining two lengths for the height and giving them a conical form to fit the stump. A flattened joint formed the top, from the center of which arose a joint of six-inch pipe, to form a draught. The old rubbish which abounds in a timbered country, with loose and broken stumps, formed the fuel. I would start a fire by the side of a stump, set over it a suitable sized stove, place the cover on top, with a sod to hold it in case the wind was blowing, leave sufficent space beneath to form a draught, and go off about other business. Some stumps would be consumed by a single fire; others would require more fire, just like a green chunk in any other stove. I only visited the fires once a day to set them going, and, while the process was slow, it was effectual and cheap.

Basswood stumps are the most refractory, and unless very rotten and dry cannot be burned out. Maple and elm burned the most readily, while oak seldom burned out with a single fire. When a stump was burned to the ground I could remove the stove and lay a chunk on the embers, which would retain the

fire and eat its way down to the dirt. In this way I make all my rubbish useful. In respect to dynamite, I have corresponded with the agents for its sale until I have learned that it is too expensive to be used by us. There are places where it may pay. It might be just the thing to hoist some of the more refractory fellows, but we always have time as an element in our favor; all that we need is patience. I have indicated many ways in which their periods may be shortened. Where their number is reduced to three or four solid old oaks to the acre I begin to think of dynamite, but it is not probable that I shall ever use it. I fear it might hoist the wrong stick of wood.

After which a paper was read upon " Undeveloped Resources,' by A. L. Hatch, of Ithica.

Mr. Gill-I would like to have the gentleman give the best manner of protecting raspberries in winter.

Mr. Hatch-I have grown only the Clark raspberry; opened the earth, covered with earth, and protected with litter outside. The best authorities and the best experience that I have had, is to cover first with earth, to exclude the air, and then protect with some coarse litter outside. Snow is a good protection. But if you don't have snow, and it thaws and freezes all winter, in the spring you may find your vines smothered to death. I would recommend you, if you are interested in it at all, to get Purdy's Small Fruit Instructor.

Mr. Field

You don't want to mulch so much but what the air can get to it.

Mr. Hatch First exclude the air with the earth, then protect the earth from making it air-tight, by covering with litter outside. You will lose your plants if you cover outside and it freezes. But the protection is applied if you cover first with earth, and then cover with litter outside. Loss has been sustained by covering with litter, especially a large body of manure that would decay during the winter, and injure the bush or vine where the decay took place.

Mr. Field-You would not cover so much as to prevent the earth freezing?