THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



farm, and the cultivation of the earth. It would 

 be easy to trace out many other good results, which 

 are attainable by this science, but so general has 

 now become a knowledge of the subject, that it 

 will be unnecessary for me to enter into minute 

 details. 



To the quarryman, architect, engineer, metallur- 

 gist, manufacturer, merchant and agriculturalist, 

 this science is of vast and almost incalculable util- 

 ity, and serves not only to direct many of their op- 

 erations, and to furnish them with the articles of 

 their several professions and trades, while it pre- 

 vents their being imposed upon by artful impos- 

 tors or ignorant pretenders. 



Enormous sums of money have been wasted, in 

 every section of our country in digging for treas- 

 ures — mines of gold, silver, or coal, in situations 

 where a geologist would have in a moment decided 

 such substances could not be found ! Pyrites has 

 been and now is frequently mistaken for silver or 

 gold, black tourmaline for coal, or an hidicatioii of 

 that combustible, while to the geologist it is a most 

 certain proof that no coal will ever be found in its 

 vicinity ! Ores of brass and pewter are talked about 

 as if any such ores really existed! Iron ores are 

 warranted to contain from 8U to 9U per cent, of that 

 metal, while the geologist and chemist know, that 

 no sucii ores can possibly exist. Yet companies are 

 organized, and such pretensions are palmed otf up- 

 on the community. 



Some farmers run out the soil, instead of enrich- 

 ing it — cursing the earth witii barrenness, instead of 

 rendering it fertile — and then emigrate to some new 

 district, to render that barren also ! Are tiiese 

 things as they ought to be ? Shall we not attempt 

 to do something to relieve the present state of this 

 most important of arts .'' 



When we feel that we are in error, if we are wise 

 we shall endeavor to correct ourselves, and eagerly 

 embrace any plan that promises us sure relief. Sci- 

 ence, embracing the great principles of all arts, 

 combining the experience of all ages, indefatigable 

 in its researches, strict and philosophical in its rea- 

 soning, tenders to us its aid, and furnishes us with 

 the principles and the means for our improvement. 

 With such knowledge, nature opens to us her illu- 

 minated page, and invites us to read her great and 

 eternal laws, and by following her mandates, the 

 elements become subservient to our will. Look 

 back into the history of the arts and sciences but 

 half a century, and contemplate their present state, 

 and you will be astonished at the results already at- 

 tained. The history of the past presages the fu- 

 ture, and as much greater will be the improve- 

 ments, as our means of knowledge are advanced. 

 Problems, obscure and incapable of being solved by 

 our ancestors, are now easily explained. Knowl- 

 edge, which formerly gave to the person who pos- 

 sessed it, th(; proud rank of philosopher, is now the 

 common properly of school-boys. Chemical ex- 

 periments, that would a century since have been 

 considered magic, and brought the operator to the 

 stake for witchcraft, are now the mereest juvenile 

 recreations, and boarding-school girls are familiar 

 with the laws of chemical affinity. 



The course of science is onward, and who will 

 now dare to limit the future.^ Knowledge is pow- 

 er, subduinir all things to our will, provided, we 

 understand the laws of nature, and are obedient to 

 their precepts. Collect facts, for they are the links 

 of the chain of reason, by which we may mount to 

 the causes of things. A single fact, taken by itself, 

 appears to an unphilosophical mind extremely in- 

 significant, and he who makes such a discovery, is 

 instantly assailed with questions as to its uses. 

 What is it good for ? What can he done with it ? 

 &c. &c. 



A philosopher, at Amalfi, in Italy, long before 

 our nation had existence, was intent upon the ex- 

 amination of a curious property exhibited by a 

 l>iece of iron ore. It attracted particles of the same 

 kind of substance, and iron filings. In one of his 

 experiments, l^e suspended the piece of iron ore by 

 a thread, and found that it pointed towards the 

 North star, and when turned in another direction, 

 and set free, it instantly turned to its North and 

 South position. This was a curious property, and 

 I doubt not, if the experimenter had mentioned it, 

 that he would have been asked, of what use is it > 

 What can you do with it ? and perhaps how much 

 money can be made by it? To all these questions 

 he would reply, I cannot tell to what uses it may 

 be put, but I do believe every law of nature is use- 

 ful, and this, among others, will be applied to some 

 useful purpose. Impressed with such an opin- 

 ion, he wrote to the Academies of Florence, 

 and forthwitli the curiosity of those philosophers 

 was aroused, and they too tried experiments with 

 the iron ore, and presently discovered, that its mao*- 

 netic properties were transferable to hardened steel. 

 Behold the results ! The mariner's compass was 



invented, and served to guide Columbus across the 

 pathless ocean. A new world was discovered, and 

 soon became the abode of civilized men. Our 

 great nation now extends its arms from the St. 

 Croix to the Capes of Florida, and westward to the 

 Rocky Mountains, and the Columbia river, and is 

 destined to cover this wliolc Continent. All this 

 is to be attributed to the discovery (jf one curious 

 property of iron ore ! 



Let us then learn to attacli due importance to all 

 facts we discover recorded in the book of nature, for 

 however obscure they may at first sight appear, be 

 assured that they will most certainly serve to ad- 

 vance human civilization. 



Geology is a science composed almost entirely of 

 facts, and the theories serving to exjilain them, are 

 but the rationale of those facts. Such, at least, is 

 the modern aspect of the science, and the more 

 rigid are we in our deductions, the more imperish- 

 able will be the results. Hypotheses may be ex- 

 ploded, theories are subject to continual modifica- 

 tions, according to the light that may be shed upon 

 their subject, but facts are in their nature' immor- 

 tal. 



Fire-side Amusements. 



Say what we will about the want of taste in mu- 

 sic of those who have gone before us, there is a 

 charm in the musical compositions of Billi.ngs, 

 and Kimball, and Holden, and otlier American 

 composers of "old lang syne" that we have never 

 felt upon us in listening to some of the ever-chang- 

 ing and forever lifeless tunes which are sung in 

 the churches of the present day. A more refined 

 taste at first passed sentence of universal condem- 

 nation against those composers ! We have heard 

 Oliver Holden condemned as one too ignorant of 

 good music to be able to seta single note in a prop- 

 er relation to its next neiglibor in the fastidious 

 days which first cast him and his compeers out of 

 the synagogue of the true musical faith. And yet 

 we find Lowell Mason (the present Monarch of 

 musical fasliion in New England) adopting "Coro- 

 nation" as one of his choice tunes. If Holden had 

 never composed other tune than that same Coro- 

 nation, he would deserve more credit as a musical 

 composer than all the mawkish pretenders who 

 have succeeded him ever earned in their attempts 

 to put down a false taste. 



There can be nothing more joyous and exhilira- 

 ting at the farmer's evening fire-side than the per- 

 formance of church music, in which all who have a 

 voice, both young and old, male and female, can 

 unite. The praises that are there lisped to the 

 Almighty, (without duly understanding, it may be 

 in children) fasten themselves upon the memory 

 afterwards to be always understood and never for- 

 gotten. We can remember forty and forty-five 

 years ago wlien the Psalmody of Billings and Hol- 

 den was wont to resound in our houses and our 

 churches; and if there is a pleasing recollection in 

 the prattle and innocence of childhood, it is reviv- 

 ed with more force in the repetition of these old 

 tunes, such as Coronation, Greenfield, Wuhurn, 

 Paris, Chester, Worecster, Invitation, 4-c. than in 

 any other event which may occur. 



Mr. Jenks, editor of the Nantucket Inquirer, has 

 a happy tact at bringing forth and describing both 

 old things and new. He is not, we believe, quite so 

 old as we are — he probably is not old enough to re- 

 collect Billings, Kimball and Holden, as venders 

 and teachers of their own music in Boston, Charles 

 town and other towns of the vicinity. We can re- 

 member one or more of them — Billings was a little 

 before our recoUection^as leaders of a sinuincr 

 choir to a congregation where every youno- man 

 and woman in the parish having a voice participat- 

 ed. The impressions, the musical impressions of 

 that time, are indelible ; and we at any moment 

 would travel far on foot to unite with any " Billincs 

 and Holden Society" in performing Coronation, or 

 even Lenox, or Korthjicld, or jYew Jerusalem. 



The Nantucket Inquirer gives tlie following 

 graphic reminiscences of the Singing Masters of 

 old time ; 



"There is a psalm-singing sodality in Boston, cal- 

 led the Billings and Holden Society — associated for 

 the purpose c*' practising what its members denom- 

 inate, ' ancient music;' that is, Yankee psalmody, 

 manufactured by the composers, whose names are 

 immortalized in the Society's title, and who flour- 

 ished, the one so very long ago as the revolutionary 

 war — the other during a somewhat later genera- 

 tion. 



" Billings constructed some few tolerable tunes, 

 and produced also an abundance of trash — perhaps 

 a bushel of chafl" to a grain of wheat. For many 

 years, in the towns of Boston and parts round about, 

 he was quite a popular teacher of wliat the Italians 

 call solfeggio, a term which some of our worthy 

 and learned ancestors translated into ' solfamiza- 



tion,' or 'solmization.' The other gentleman — the 

 junior in this posthumous copartnership — if we mis- 

 take not, dwelt in Charlestown, where he fabricat- 

 ed sundry passable ditties, still preserved among the 

 ' 'Village Collections' of sacred music. He ex- 

 changed the antiquated goose-toned pitchpipe for 

 that most dulcet of all screaming windpipes, the 

 clarionet— the wliicli he blew melodiously, though 

 Sam While and other envious bassoon-blowers us- 

 ed to insist Upon it that his A was always too sharp. 

 Indeed, they poked fun at his very face, which be- 

 ing rather acuminated and apeak, they declared was 

 whittled away by the sharpness of his notes, or 

 blown to a point by the blast employed to deliver so 

 many semibreves in a breath. Others still more 

 naughty, alluding to his habit of looking simultane- 

 ously at both elids of the 'tune,' a peculiarity usu- 

 ally expressed by the phrase 'cross-eyed,' vowed 

 that he saw nothing but sharps — while he, on the 

 contrary, turning both his optics and his wit upon 

 them, asserted that he could see nothing but flats ; 

 thus gently rebuking them for perceiving his motes 

 without confessing their own beams I 



"There was another memorable instructerin the 

 mysteries of crochctology — one master Mann, who 

 at divers times oversaw most of the Boston sing- 

 ing schools. He was a cotemporary of Holden, and 

 was the author of numerous pieces still extant, pub- 

 lished under the significant and comprehensive ti- 

 tles of No. 13, No. 21, No. 3'J, &c. His mode of 

 teaching was efFectivej though abounding in singu- 

 larities, and his manner prompt and earnest. It 

 was his custom, while teaching the choir attached 

 to the Barry street Church, now Mr. Channing's, 

 after having selected a tune for-practice, to vocif- 

 erate a part of the first line of the stanza to be sung, 

 as a signal for all hands, all throats, to commence 

 in concert.' One evening a young clarionet play- 

 er, ignorant of this custom, and ambitious to give 

 the 'pitch,' incontinently undertook that task with- 

 out waiting for the accustomed cue. In his zeal, 

 he produced one of those shrill and piercing squeaks 

 so apt to be emitted by inexperienced performers on 

 that perplexing instrument. A thrill of consterna- 

 tion penetrated the whole assembly, at so careless 

 and sudden an outbreak; while master Mann quick- 

 ly turned upon the hapless culprit, his very specta- 

 cles seeming to dilate with astonishment, and with- 

 out utteting aught else, pronounced with extraor- 

 dinarj' emphasis the leading words of the hymn — 

 ' Lord ! what a thoughtless wretch !' It is needless 

 to add that the tune (Greenfield) was so badly exe- 

 cuted, that a repetition, for the sake of amendment, 

 was exceedingly expedient. 



" While Billings' compositions were in the zenith 

 of their popularity, certain publishers acquired no 

 small income from their sale. One of these, at his 

 shop in Cornhill projected a signboard into the 

 street, bearing on either side the simple inscription 

 ^ BiUmgs' Music' A wag of the older school, hav- 

 ing no taste for the fugitive and rambling innova- 

 tions of the day, in which he affected to hear noth- 

 hig but discofd and jargon, determined on inflict- 

 ing a practical satire upon the prevailing mania ; 

 and selected the luckless music seller's sign-board 

 as the bearer of his indignant joke. He according- 

 ly provided himself with a couple of stout speci- 

 mens of the feline race, and with a yard of strong 

 codline tied them togetlier by their vertebral term- 

 inations, vidgo tails. Thus accoutred, he proceed- 

 ed at midnight to the scene pf action, and threw his 

 burthen across the offending protrusion, in such 

 manner that the teeth, whiskers and claws of the 

 two cats came in contact just below the sign, while 

 their inverted nether extremes were held inextrica- 

 bly by the string above. As may be imagined, a 

 most delectable duett was the consequence, com- 

 prising all sorts of variations — mewing affetuoso, 

 hiiing agitato, spitting staccato, and scratching piz- 

 zicato^-whicli endured until sunrise. At that hour 

 the passers by were greeted with this mischievous 

 illustration of the words upon the sign-board — but 

 the owner soon stepped forth and removed both 

 textand commentary." 



Josiah Stevens, Esq. New Hampshire Secretary 

 of State, raised last season on one acre of lio-ht soil 

 upon his farm in Newport very near thirty bushels 

 of the common bearded wheat. He sowed upon 

 this acre four bushels of dry slacked lime made at 

 Wethersfield, Vt. Mr. Stevens is of opinion that 

 his crop of wheat was doubled in consequence of 

 the application of the lime. One bushel and a half 

 of seed was sowed. 



To prevent smul in wheat. — Dissolve two ounces 

 of blue vitriol in one quart of water, and apply this 

 to every bushel of seed wheat at least twenty-four 

 hours previous to sowing. The application has 

 been never known to fail. 



