No. 7. 



Improve the Soil — Planting Forest Trees. 



S13 



know that eicg-s always Wmg a g'ood price 

 during the season of frost, boil bran or siiorts 

 in pot-liquor, in vvliich meat lias been cooked, 

 and which has imparted to it the animal 

 juices, with which they feed their hens, and 

 it is unquestionable that they derive a great 

 advantage from it. Corn and oats parched 

 or browned in a pot over the fire is a kind of 

 food that poultry are very fond of, as well as 

 boiled grain of any kind, and an occasional 

 change of food is found by long experience 

 and observation to be highly important in pro- 

 moting the health and thritl of domestic ani- 

 mals of every kind. Keep your fowls dry 

 and clean, give tliem good lodging, provide 

 them with some dry dirt, ashes or old slacked 

 lime to rub themselves in, and give them a 

 plentiful supply of food, a portion of which 

 should be animal, and you will not have to 

 complain for their not thriving or laying 

 eggs. Susan. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Inipi-ove the Soila^and go Ahead« 



No farmer " goes ahead" unless he raises 

 an abundance of grass. Where there is but 

 little grass there is always a short purse, said 

 a man of extensive observation and great ex- 

 perience ; the reason of this must be so obvious 

 as scarcely to need an explanation ; for of 

 grass comes manure, and manure is the phi- 

 losophers' stone, which turns every thing into 

 gold, provided it is well husbanded and judi- 

 ciously applied to the soil. The e.xperiment 

 of trying to raise profitable crops on worn-out 

 lands without manure has been made thou- 

 sands of times and always resulted in the 

 same way ; it is therefore unnecessary to re- 

 peat it again, for disappointment and shame 

 will always attend it. But, says the man of 

 the poor farm, how ami to help repeating 

 this everlasting abortive experiment 1 Why, 

 in the way you help doing any thing else \ 

 which you know to be wrong ; by not doing 

 it. Weil, how am I to live if I don't go on 

 in the old way] Go to work in earnest, de- 

 termine to reform and do better ; instead of 

 spreading your manure over fii'teen or twenty 

 acres; cultivate but one-third or one-half the 

 quantity of land ; go just as far as you can to 

 do justice to the soil and to yourself, and no 

 further; don't go one inch beyond, make 

 your land feel the effect of the manure ; don't 

 tantalize it with a mere smell of it. What 

 would you think of a neighbour inviting you 

 to dine and when the time arrived you were 

 only permitted to smell the good things, but 

 obliged to keep hands ofl! You would think 

 he was a .stingy mean fellow, and you would 

 not go into that trap again I'll vouch for it. 

 Now if your old worn-out fiokls could talk 

 and tell what they think of their owners, vo- 

 ciferate their griefs, what a tale of woe would 



they not develope ! It might be something 

 on this wise. That mean, stingy, stupid old 

 fellow has been scratchmg over me tiiose 

 forty years and more, and though providence 

 has always benevolently furnished me witli 

 plenty of drink of tiie purest and best kind, 

 yet have I never had a full jural during 

 somewheres near half a century, and for more 

 than four-fifths of that time I have been left 

 to snuff the air and shift for my.«elf, witliout 

 any sustenance being oflered me, and yet it 

 is expected of me to produce crops ('(jual to 

 what I rendered in the duys of my youth, 

 vvhen my belly was full of meat and my bones 

 full of marrow. Vain expectation ! it is near- 

 ly over with me unless help comes from ihc 

 dunghill or some other quarter. This ever- 

 lasting scratching my hide may go on to all 

 eternity with still Jess and less success, till 

 my owners and all their worthless, lazy pro- 

 geny to the seventh generation, may be 

 starved out of house and home, unless an ade- 

 quate quantity of good, wholesome, nutritious 

 food be furnished me to resuscitate and in- 

 vigorate my exhausted system, and to enable 

 me to put on my green mantle as I was wont 

 to do in my earlier and better days. 



Farm poor land poorly, and poverty will be 

 your lot whatever your name may be, but 

 manure the soil, enrich it, farm it well, and 

 keep it in a regular advance of improvement 

 by raising an abundance of grass, and pros- 

 perity will smile upon you and yours if so be 

 you are virtuous. 



West. 



Tor the Farmers' Cabinet. 



On Planting Forest Trees for Fencing. 



" Aye be sticking in a tree, it will grow while you are 

 sleeping." 



In many parts of the old settlements of this 

 country, timber for fencing has become scarce 

 and costly, as those farmers who have it to 

 purchase for current use can testify. There 

 are farms divided into small enclosures by 

 cedar or chestnut rails, where the value of the 

 fence bears a large proportion to the whole 

 value of the property; and some years since 

 my attention was called to a farm of about one 

 hundred acres, which was fenced in an ex- 

 traordinary manner with cedar, which on e.x- 

 amiiiation was found to have sold for less than 

 the fence would have sold for separately. 

 There is always more or less wood land on 

 farms, but in most instances by cutting out, 

 or from other causes, lliore are many bald 

 places or blanks, which produce nothing of 

 value either fin- the present, or expectation for 

 the future ; and on most farms there are spaces 

 not adapted to cultivation, which remain 

 blank, producing nothing. Now I desire to 

 turn the attention of the readers of the Cabi- 

 net to these blanlis in their farms, if so be 



