230 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



barn cellar, they have to be carried some ten rods or more from the 

 house to the barn. Here also is a loss of labor or a loss of beef, or 

 both. The farmer's profits are small under the best arrangements, 

 and will not bear to be lessened by small leaks. Like some large 

 manufacturing establishments, the difference of a small fraction of a 

 day or of a dollar, in the production of results, is just the difference 

 between success and failure. 



In the house, every extra door or window, every unnecessary foot 

 of floor, are to be kept painted and cleaned ; every unused or useless 

 room is to be taken care of — to say nothing of furniture ; and the 

 extra labor for these things deducts so much from the wife's pro- 

 ductive labor or necessary recreation ; or more usually, incurs the 

 expense of hiring help. 



I have spoken principally of the loss of labor, by inconvenient 

 arrangements ; but there are other serious losses sustained by nine 

 tenths of our farmers, which properly built barns would prevent. 

 The loss of hay, wasted under the feet of cattle ; the loss of flesh, 

 from exposure of cattle to cold and discomfort ; and more than all, 

 the loss of all the liquid and a large part of the value of the solid 

 manure, the house slops, the night soil and the domestic guano. 



Too much time has, perhaps, been taken up with these details; 

 yet if one farmer who is about erecting buildings shall hereby be 

 induced to look more thoroughly into his wants, and to build accord- 

 ingly, this will not have been written in vain. 



As to the moral influence of our rural architecture, it would, per- 

 haps, be going too far, to say, that it causes vice or tends to bad 

 habits, directly; or that in the cases of the better kinds, it leads to 

 virtue or restrains from sin, directly ; yet that the house we live in, 

 has an influence upon the mind and character, is I think, self-evi- 

 dent, or susceptible of proof I have somewhere read of an artist 

 who would never allow himself to look at an object of deformity. 

 Things of beauty he would contemplate, and thus have his mind 

 filled with none but beautiful images, lest the deformity should man- 

 ifest itself in his creations. His idea was a correct one, and may be 

 applied to our subject. Let a child live in a house, which, with its 

 surroundings possesses no element of beauty ; let him be accustomed 

 to see only such in his daily walks, and will not the mind in some 

 degree, partake of this want of attractiveness ? Do not the images 



