No. 5. 



The Sugar Beet. 



159 



presumption and folly to suppose that every 

 thing, or indeed that any thing in nature 

 should be measured by our wishes or our no- 

 tions of utility or expediency ; but it would 

 be difficult to point out a season, wheu a more 

 liberal compensation has been made to agri- 

 cultural industry and skill. 



Early vegetables came forward seasonably 

 and in abundance. The small fruits yielded 

 profusely. Grass has been every where much 

 more than a middling crop; and after the 

 first part of the summer, no season was ever 

 more favorable to the securing of it Rye 

 and oats throughout the State, as far as we 

 have heard, have given a great yield. Wheat, 

 In our part of the country, has in general pro- 

 duced an inferior crop ; but in the western 

 States it was never more abundant. It is 

 said that wheat on the Wabash sells freely at 

 thirty-seven and a-half cents per bushel ; and 

 that it can be easily brought round to New 

 York in sacks holding two bushels, by the way 

 of New Orleans, and delivered free of all 

 charges, at eighty-five cents per bushel. We 

 have been told, perhaps, however, it may be 

 only a traveler's story, and the due abate- 

 ments are tn be made from it, that one farmer 

 in Michigan has this season, on thirteen hun- 

 dred acres, raised thirty-nine thousand bush- 

 els of wheat. Be this as it may, western 

 New York is full of wheat Dairy produce, 

 too, through the country is abundant. Indian 

 corn has come in well, and so perfectly has it 

 ripened every where, that many farmers are 

 in the situation of one who said he did not 

 know what he should do for pig corn to feed 

 his swine. The crops of onions, in some of 

 our towns a large product, have, it is believed, 

 fallen short of a usual supply. Sugar beets, 

 ruta baga and carrots, were perhaps never 

 better. More young stock has been raised in 

 Massachusetts the current year, than is re- 

 membered to have been raised in any previous 

 year. We might go on, but we stop here. 



With all this abundance, in the midst of 

 these unmeasured bounties of Divine Provi- 

 dence, perhaps there was never more or louder 

 complaints of hard times and hard pressures; 

 and the commercial world seems to be threat- 

 ened with a general crash. There is no mys- 

 tery in all these matters ; and we moan, at 

 some future time, to discuss at large the cause 

 of these embarrassments and sufferings. It 

 may not be very palatable to our pride to hear 

 of them, but it may prove medicinal to our 

 morals. Presently we shall hear that neither 

 individuals nor communities, through either 

 avarice or folly, can violate tlie great laws of 

 nature or Providence with impunity. If men 

 will not labor, they cannot be allowed to eat ; 

 and if they will not be satisfied with the 

 gradual and moderate, yet ample gains of 

 honest industry and just frugality, but will 



plunge headlong into every species of specu- 

 lation and gambling, then, according to the 

 proverbs of the wise, he that makcth haste to 

 be rich shall seldom be innocent; and the 

 folly of fools shall destroy them. All that 

 seems to be lamentable in the case is, that 

 the guilty drag the innocent into the same 

 vortex of ruin. This arises from our social 

 constitution ; and is not without its benevolent 

 designs and beneficent uses. Whatever the 

 honest and industrious, however, may be 

 doomed to suffer on account of other men's 

 follies and crimes, there is one good, the 

 greatest of all earthly goods, of which a just 

 Providence will never suffer them to be de- 

 prived — that is a clear conscience — as the 

 Romans called it, "the mind conscious of 

 right." This is a treasure which the wealth 

 of the world cannot purchase, and for the loss 

 of which the wealth of the world would be a 

 poor equivalent. < H. C. 



Sngar Beet* 



The attention of farmers is requested to 

 the subjoined communication from the Hon. 

 Elli.s Lewis, of Lycoming county, Pa., in 

 regard to the cultivation of this plant, as a 

 feed for cattle. All " experiments''' of this 

 kind being well worthy of trial, and that of 

 Judge L. having resulted so advantageously, 

 we think it commends itself to the favorable 

 consideration of the farming community gen- 

 erally. — Harrisburg Keystone. 



In the month of April last, I planted about 

 an acre of sugar beets, for the purpose of feed- 

 ing to the cattle during the winter season. — 

 The ground consisted of several patches, some 

 of which had been used for potatoes the year 

 before. — After it was properly prepared, deep 

 furrows were run through it two feet apart, 

 in which manure was aflerwards deposited, 

 which was covered by running a furrow on 

 each side of the first, and thus forming a 

 small ridge over the manure. Along this the 

 beets were dropped and covered by means of 

 a species of hand drill of my own invention, 

 composed of a piece of two inch plank about 

 a foot long, in the shape of a triangle, with 

 three old harrow teeth formed like small 

 shovels of the proper shape, and a handle of 

 about four and a half feet long, with a calibre 

 about the size of a rifie bore, through which 

 the seed were made to descend into a furrow 

 formed by the front tooth ; they were covered 

 by the two hind teeth. The seed were de- 

 posited in the row about a foot apart. On 

 the first of November the beets were taken 

 up. The product of four hundred and forty^ 

 feet was weigfhed on the hay scales and 

 amounted to eight hundred and twenty pounds, 

 which, counting sixty pounds to the bushel, 

 would be thirteen bushels and two thirds. — 



