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careful not to waste unnecessarily that vegetable matter. Let us return as much 

 to the soil as we take from it, and it will rather improve on our hands. On this 

 point there is, doubtless, more pi'actical fatal ignorance, than on any other of 

 equal importance that can be named. It is readily perceived, that stock of all 

 kinds must be cared for and kept up — that garments, and tools, and buildings, 

 must be repaired and renewed ; but our poor yet bountiful old Mother Earth can 

 be worked hard not only " week in and week out," but " year in and year out," 

 generation after generation, without an ounce of care or provision, unless it be a 

 poor mouthful of weeds or stubble too worthless to rob her of — though oftentimes 

 this, in the sublime height of our folly, is handed over to the devouring jaws of 

 that arch enemy, fire ! The least, then, that could be done to keep up these un- 

 speakably pi'ecious stores upon which we are all dependent, would be to return 

 most religiously every spare portion of them back again. What stock, what 

 store, what " pile" so large, that if always subtracted from and never replenished, 

 will not eventually become utterly exhausted, and its owner beggared, if depen- 

 dent on it ? He well knows that Dame Nature has to pay the first cost of settling 

 new countries; that capital in them is scarce, and labor high — requiring, there- 

 foie large drafts upon her long-treasured hoards ; that, with their poor markets, 

 in those new countries, an English or even Eastern style of farming throughout, 

 would never pay. Yet it does not follow, tliat our present shiftless, wasteful 

 style is necessary, even under all our disadvantages. Tell me now, can we afford 

 to raise two crops on our land, or rather one of weeds, and only half a crop of 

 grain, instead of one good clean crop of something valuable ? Had we better try 

 to work so much land, that we can work none at all right ? Had we better try 

 to raise one staple crop alone, and that one the most uncertain and unprofitable 

 of all — and, in so doing, be compelled to buy abroad, and import a thousand 

 necessaries we could just as well raise or manufacture on our own soil — as fruit, 

 cheese, linseed oil, paper, cordage, and (if we must have it) tobacco; to say 

 nothing of linens and woollens, and the endless variety of manufactured articles 

 in use. Can we aftbrd to burn up our straw heaps, and let our heaps of manure 

 waste away year after year, as is now generally practised ? To come still nearer 

 home, can we afford to pay annually from $20 to Si 00 per family, for those 

 worse than useless articles, liquor and tobacco, tea and coffee, especially when 

 " positively too poor to pay fifty cents or one dollar a year for an agiicultural 

 newspaper?" Can we, as parents, afford to rear up families of idle, worthless, 

 genteel sons and daughters to burden our old age and society with — to play the 

 part of drones or leeches, in this busy, progressive age, when labor is coming to 

 be respected for its own sake, as, indeed, it must be in a true, lasting Republic. 



But we are, perhaps, digressing again — though most of the above mentioned 

 erroiT? bear proportionally as hard on horticulture as agriculture; as starved, 



