1QQ "WEST OXFORD SOCIETY. 



vegetable and animal, having a due regard to the cheapest mode of 

 production. 



I have thus thrown out these hints for your future contemplation, 

 nothing doubting but that some of them will engage jour atten- 

 tion. » 



In this connection I would suggest to you, as a matter of economy, 

 the importance of having at least the rooms in your houses made as 

 warm as possible for winter. It is all nonsense to talk about too 

 warm houses here in the country, provided the means of ventilation 

 be at hand. I know many a farmer who will spend all his winters 

 preparing firewood, and yet you can put your fingers between his 

 window sash, or through the bottom of his doors, which a very little 

 attention would prevent. I have no doubt that one-third of the 

 wood and labor might be saved in this State among our farmers by 

 a little attention to this point. Secure double windows to .your 

 kitchen and sitting room, as well as double plaster them, and you 

 will not produce an involuntary shudder in every member of your 

 family at the thought of winter. A current of cold air passing be- 

 neath the doors from worn doorstools causes cold feet and headaches 

 to all the inmates of the house. 



In all your experiments with new and untried vegetables, you 

 may lay it down as a pretty safe rule, that no profit can be made 

 from any article whose seed will not ripen. You may obtain syrup 

 from the sugar cane, but if you cannot ripen the seed, all the com- 

 mercial profits of the article will be realized by those in a more 

 favored climate. 



One of the pleasantest subjects for contemplation is a happy old 

 age, and one of the finest pictures that the painter can draw from 

 reality is that of the intelligent old man surrounded by his children 

 and grandchildren. Poets of all ages have sung of the pleasures of 

 the farm. "0 most happy farmers," says Virgil, ''if they know 

 how well situated they are." The land is always just to them, and 

 pours forth abundant food. If he possesses not a lofty house, he 

 docs not find himself beset like the great with an army of hungry 

 dependants, nor straitened out by fashion. The showy, false, and 

 deceitful glare of courts has no charms for the man who has experi- 

 enced the solid happiness of his farm. The valleys, the streams, 

 the lakes, the hills and mountains, the cool shade of trees, the low- 



