1856.] Mental Precocity. 5Q'Y 



bleached,) from the cows of Jersey and Guernsey, England, fed on 

 the parsnip, is almost as rich in flavor and color, as when they are 

 fed in summer pasture. 



We do not intend to say that the root crops will supplant our other 

 forage crops; but that by their cultivation, they will form most im- 

 portant aids and adjuvants in affording us more adequate supplies of 

 forage of a marketable character. The advantages of root-raising 

 are various; but they may be briefly summed up thus — they are cer- 

 tain and prolific, they make mellow the soil, they afford variety of 

 feed during winter ; this food being of a succulent nature, tends to 

 promote the animal's health, and for the same reason increases the 

 flow of milk in cows, and greatly improves its butter making quality. 

 So convinced are we of the aggregate of advantages derivable from 

 an increased measure of attention to our root-crops, that we hesitate 

 not to declare, that if every farmer of this region would plant but 

 one acre of parsnips and carrots the coming year, it would constitute 

 an era in agriculture which would be remembered and quoted as the 

 inauguration of an era of unwonted abundance and prosperity. 



jBntfll ^5rrrnritt]. 



From the daysof Dr. Goldsmith's "Thinks-I-To-Myself " down 

 to Anno Domini 1856, parents are found prone to the belief that in 

 the person of their own particular only child, an intellectual prodigy 

 was born. Under this impression, parental solicitude is aroused and 

 its activity quickened, by parental pride, to seek out means and ap- 

 pliances for stimulating the mental action of a child, who may indeed 

 present a precocious intellectual development. In such case noth- 

 ing could be more unwise, nothing more hurtful to both the mental 

 and bodily development of such child, than thus to stimulate this 

 precocity into greater exuberance of growth. Parental care would 

 be acting the part of both wisdom and kindness, to judiciously repress 

 rather than to foster this premature development, and aim to guide 

 this overflowing rivulet into the natural channel of the intellectual 

 current. To any one who has taken note of such matters, such pre- 

 cocious development of the mental faculties will present nought but 

 an unpleasant aspect, inasmuch as it is but a manifestation of disease. 

 It is the disease of a very fine, but a very weak, nervous organization ; 



