52 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



ous, our springs unfailing, and our streams more con- 

 stant and equable ; our blasts would be less bitter, 

 and our gales less destructive to fruit ; we should 

 have vastly more birds to delight us by their melody 

 and aid us in our not very successful war with de- 

 vouring insects ; we should grow peaches, cherries, 

 and other delicate fruits, which the violent caprices 

 of our seasons, the remorseless devastations of our 

 visible and invisible insect enemies, have all but an- 

 nihilated ; and we should keep more cows and make 

 more milk on two-thirds of the land now devoted to 

 grass than we actually do from the whole of it. And 

 what is true of Westchester is measurably true of 

 every rural county in the Union. 



I have said that I believe in cutting trees as well 

 as in growing them ; I have not said, and do not 

 mean to say, that I believe in cutting everything 

 clean as you go. That was once proper in "VVestches- 

 ter ; it is still advisable in forest-covered regions, 

 where the sun must be let in before crops can be 

 grown ; but, in nine cases out of ten, timber should 

 be thinned or culled out rather than cut off; and, for 

 every tree taken away, at least two should be planted 

 or set out. 



We have pretty well outgrown the folly of letting 

 every apple-tree bear such fruit as it will ; though in 

 the orchard of my father's little farm in Amherst, 

 N". H., whereon I was born, no tree had c ver been 

 grafted when I bade adieu to it in 1820 ; and I pre- 

 sume none has been to this day. By this time, almost 



