White Russian Oats

One who believes in White Rusaian oats gives his experience with them in a late number of the Country Gentleman. Writing from Plattsburg, N. Y. he says: Last spring I seut to Ferry & Co., Detroit, and got 16 pounds (measuring 14quarts)oi white lïussian oats. These oats I sowed on sixty-four hiindredths of an acre of rather heavy clay ground, on which I had raised corn the previous year. The land was plowed in the f all, and lef t in the rough. In the spring, as soon as the ground was fit to work, I harrowed twice, then sowed my oats broadcast (with the exception of a narrow strip); then covered with a smoothing harrow. The strip raentioiied I laid off in drills one foot apart. In these drills I had 4$ ounces of seed dropped by hand, the grains 6 inches apart in the drills, and covered carefuily with a rake and rolled with a light hand-roller. At the same time, and on the same kind of grouud, prepared and planted in the same way, I put in 5L ounces of common white oats. The strips were separated by a few rows of corn to keep the grain from mixing. I cultivated twice. The common oats rusted slightly, and ripened about two weeks earlier than the Russian. The latter showed no signs of rust. I threshed the oats from these strips, with flails.as soon as they were harvested. Of the common oats I had 2J bushels of 32 pounds each from 5L ounces of seed, while of tbe Russian I had 5L bushels of 32 pounds from 4 ounces of seed. Soon after my broadcast sown oats were up, a severe drouth set in, and when they were from three to four inches high they appeared to stop growing entirely, and ground baking and cracking into blocks, so that in many places I could run my fingere into the crevices. To remedy this evil I put on the smeothing harrow, which lightened up the surface and filled most of the cracks. From this time the oats grew, and although at the time they were so thin and weak that in many places you could hardly see that there was anything on the ground, at harvest time the field was a perfect sea of heads, many of them being from sixteen to twenty inches long. Not having room on my premises at harvest time, I put my grain in a neighbor's barn, and did not get at it to thresh until December, when upon cleaning up (although thé mice had eaten the grain very badly), I found I had 63 bushels of oats, 32 pounds to the bushei, raised on 0.64 of an acre of ground, and from only H quarts sown. The Kussian oats did not rust, whilmy field of common oats sown on simi ar ground rusted so badly they were ardly worth har vesting.