354 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



I give you a receipt to prevent tobacco worms, as practiced 

 by many vi^ith success, and it shortens the labor on the crop fully 

 half. The worm is hatched from a fly which appears in the eve- 

 ning before dark. About sundown build little fires through the 

 field on stumps, or between the rows ; the flies will rush into the 

 blaze, and that will be the end of them. 



BEANS. 



Small white Navy beans will be wanted. It requires no more 

 labor to raise beans than it does wheat ; perhaps a bushel of 

 beans can be raised easiest. They will bring, at least, one-third 

 more, and usually the yield per acre is greater. Put in a quar- 

 ter, a half, a whole acre, or ten acres. No crop pays better, is 

 surer, or leaves the land in better order. 



FLAX. 



There is a strong belief in the minds of many that flax is yet 

 to be crowned king of these realms. There are divers ingenious 

 loyal friends of his laboring night and day to place the crown on 

 his head. Most ancient — in blossom most beautifully blue — how 

 the memories of childhood are restored, when we talk again of 

 flax ! When raised for the seed alone, and year after year, it has 

 always been as profitable as wheat. But men will raise wheat, 

 hoping every year to get twenty-five or thirty bushels an acre, 

 and they are deluded like buyers of lottery tickets. Of flax, 

 Virgil says it burns the soil; but if he lived in these days, and 

 raised wheat at 50 cents a bushel, he would call it a burning 

 shame. I hint to the farmers that they had better be thinking 

 of flax-brakes again — of linen sheets and towels, which last, on 

 an average, as long as a human generation — of, too, pantaloons 

 and shirts, easily dirtied, but easily washed, and so cool as q^e 

 walks to the meadow with a scythe on the shoulder in the early 

 morning. There have been more true patriotism and more true 

 love beneath homespun linen shirts than beneath cotton ones, 

 and my opinion is that Yankee ingenuity will cause linen to 

 reign at the end of the world the same as at the beginning of it. 

 Farmers ! by all means raise flax ; in so doing, you will be look- 

 ing forward and be wise. 



WOOL. 



He who sends a young, good-wooled sheep to the butcher, is 

 doing his country a wrong. Sales of such should be made to 



