No. 5. 



Month of January. 



155 



turneps for winter use after digging early 

 potatoes. Some of sufficient size were raised 

 in that way last year, and we have seen some 

 this season that have already attained a good 

 size for eating, on ground that has produced 

 a crop of potatoes ; and they will probably 

 grow a montli or more yet 



" The Cultivator's Almanac and Cabinet of 

 Agricultural Kjiowledge, for the year 1840, 

 by William Buckminster, Esq., Editor of 

 the Boston Cultivator" is before us. It is 

 neatly got up, as the phrase is, and we think it 

 must give general satisfaction. It consists of 

 one hundred and twenty-four pages, including 

 tlie Calendar, which is calculated for Boston, 

 New York, and Washington City. The few 

 tables giveil are replete with interest, and 

 the great part of the reading matter is such 

 as to commend it to the notice and favor of 

 the practical farmer, and all who desire to 

 improve in the arts of agriculture and hus- 

 bandry. D. H. Williams, Boston, is the pub- 

 lisher, but we learn that the work may be ob- 

 tained in this city of Mr. Perkins, Chestnut 

 street We extract a part of the notices for 

 the 



3Ionth ot January* 



With the month of January we commence 

 the year. The Romans commenced it on the 

 first of March. July took its name from the 

 great Julius Ccesar. August from Augustus 

 Csesar. September from the numeral sept em 

 seven, being the seventh from March. Octo, 

 eight — novem, nine, — decern, ten, furnish the 

 other numeral months. 



January is usually our coldest month, though 

 sometimes we have a day in February as cold 

 as any in the sea.son. In December, with our 

 shortest days, we seldom have t!.e coldest of 

 weather. The heat of the summer has not 

 all passed off, and warmth is ascending from 

 the earth to mitigate the severity of the frost. 



FROSTS. 



Philosophers have sometimes disputed on 

 the question whether frost was a positive or 

 a neirative quality. Cowper exclaims, — 

 " What art thou. Frost]" These were times 

 when men disputed much upon words, and 

 could hardly hope for any useful result from 

 their discussions. Bacon led the way of in- 

 quiry into the nature of things and of course 

 thought less of the terms made use of, pro- 

 vided they conveyed the proper ideas; and 

 philosophers now, instead ofinquiring whether 

 cold is a negative or a positive quality, are 



searching into the bowels of the earth to as- 

 certain the cause of the heat which uniformly 

 increases £is we approach the centre. 

 geology. 

 Modern geologists contend that our earth 

 was once a ball of liquid lava, and that in a 

 course of time, passing tlirough a cold sky» 

 its outside has become so cool as to form a 

 shell or crust hard enough for mortals to stand 

 upon. That the eruptions of volcanic moun- 

 tains are caused by the contraction of this 

 cooling shell, making a combined pressure on 

 the heated liquid below us, and causing it to 

 burst out at the various crevices, which are 

 usually mountains thrown up in the early 

 stages of this crusty formation. It is an as- 

 certained fact that the deeper we descend in- 

 to the earth the greater tlie heat, increasing 

 about one degree to sixty teet, and that we 

 should therefore not be in much dread of the 

 frosts of January, if we would first step down 

 one single mile below our customary platform. 

 If the doctrine be correct that our earth is 

 still growing cooler, we may, by and by, 

 wish to creep a little below the surface to en- 

 joy a portion of this rarified atmosphere in 

 the absence of the sun : as the Esquimeaux 

 Indians now do when they are deprived of its 

 rays. 



SPORTS OF WINTER. 



Winter brings joy to the youth who are 

 not at that season so much confined to labor, 

 and they hail its return with quite as much 

 zest as the aged do the return of the summer 

 season. The sleigh rido and the skating fro- 

 lick are sports in which the frost must always 

 have a share, and it is always made welcome 

 to the young. Winter has its comforts for 

 the adults also. The long evenings favor the 

 social visits of country people, who often, with- 

 out a formal invitation, take up their abode 

 for the evening in a neighbor's house, and 

 "talk the night away," at least in part, over 

 asocial fire — in an open fire place, — that gives 

 light to the whole room. Here formers will talk 

 of their modes of management, of their stock, 

 of their grain, of their vegetables, and of their 

 ye ir's store of meat, salted up safe in the cellar : 

 and they enjoy a feeling of independence un- 

 known to him who must first seek employment, 

 then his compensation, then the best market 

 to lay out his cash in, from day to day, to sup- 

 port an anxious family. When the good hus- 

 bandman has laid up his stores for the season, 

 and feels within himself that he has provided 

 comforts not only for himself and family, but 

 for his cattle and all the brute race on his 

 farm — that he has fields of his own that will 

 always, with a common blessing, yield him 

 an abundance of the good things of life — that 

 1 the failures or the misfortunes of those en- 

 gaged in more uncertain pursuits need not, 



