J 32 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



ing of wannino- manure. Tlie expense of his prc- 

 pMation has been about fourteen lIoIKh-b to the a- 



"^^Kngacred with his partner in extensive U\v busi- 

 ness requirins every -day attention, Judge H. does 

 not find time lo laljor himself upon his farm, flis 

 practice is to spend an hour each morning and 

 evenin" in directing operations, personally know- 

 ino-and examining every thing. Living liberally 

 in''a large family, it will not be expected thai he 

 should annually realize a great profit in ready mon- 

 ey from his farm. Much of his annual expendi- 

 ture has been in the increase of its capacity and of 

 course the extension of the capital stock. Take 

 his farm in its present condition, after paying for 

 the labor and every thing expended, it must yield 

 a handsome profit. His investments appear to have 

 been all judicious: no attempt to improve shows 

 that money has been thrown away. Kvery exper- 

 iment is ail amendment: every new operation adds 

 to the value of the soil operated upon. Generous 

 expenditures are generously refunded. If he shall 

 have obtained more w^ealth in the successful pur- 

 suit of his profession than fiom his farm, he may 

 enjoy the comfortable reflection that in tilling and 

 improving the soil he adds to the real production of 

 the countl-y, while the wealth gained in tlie prac- 

 tice of the law is only a transfer of his property 

 perhaps from the hands of some who might be more 

 benefitted in keeping, than lie can be in receiv- 

 ing it. 



Forllie Fnrmer's Miilithly Visitor. 



Hon. I. Hill ;— The following Revolutionary 

 anecdote was related by your late townsman, tlie 

 venerable JoNATiiA.v Eastjian, Esq. and refers to 

 an ofiicer of the Continental army named Badger, 

 presumed to be a relative of our former Governor. 

 It is briefly this : 



When the American army retreated from Cana- 

 da, after the disastrous expedition to the "Three 

 Rivers" (Trois Rivicrr.s) it lay sometime at Crown 

 Point, while the British army occupied St. Johns. 

 The American General desiring to obtain some in- 

 formation in regard to their anticipated movements, 

 Mr. R. volunteered for t!i;' purpose ; and embark- 

 ing with three others in a boat, he landed near St. 

 Johns about dark. 



It happened upon that night, a ball v>-as given by 

 the British ofiicers, of which they obtained infor- 

 mation from a countryman whom they made pris- 

 oner. Leaving him at the boat in custody of two 

 of his party. Badger proceeded with the other into 

 the town, with a view of making prisoner some 

 one of the oflicers. He was well acquainted with 

 the localities of the town, and ivatchmg near a 

 house occupied for officers' quarters, at last discov- 

 ered a voung officer coming out ready dressed for 

 the ball. They sprang upon him ere he was aware 

 of their presence, and with loaded pistols present- 

 ed at his head, commanded him, in silence, to fol- 

 low them. When they reached the boat, a new and 

 bolder idea struck Badger. Beingof nearly equal 

 size with the prisoner, he ordered the latter to ex- 

 change clothes with him ; and determined under 

 the mask of a British uniform to attend the ball and 

 gather what information he could from the conver- 

 sation of those there present. 



The circumstance that most of the officers under 

 Sir Guy Carletoii's command were present, many 

 of whom had lately joined liis army, and being per- 

 sonally unknown to each other, favored his design. 

 He collected from their cmversation what intelli- 

 gence he desired — danced as long as he pleased, 

 and when tired of that amusement retun.ed to his 

 boat — discharged the countryman ; and with his 

 other prisoner returned in triumph to Crown Point. 

 Had he been detected, the fate of Major Andre and 

 of Capt. Hale had been his. But he was more for- 

 tunate. V. 



the result of their rescarchea. They have learned 

 much, and there is much more yet to be learned of 

 this wonderful insect. I have myself kept bees 

 for thirteen or fourteen years: I Icng since felt the 

 necessity of preserving these little creatures from 

 the barbarous custom of annual suffocation. For 

 a while I tried the box-hive, but found my bees un- 

 willing to entef it, and I lost several swarms in 

 trying to force them into it. I abandoned this kind 

 uf hive, and finished a room in my garret, dark and 

 tight, with a commiuiication through the external 

 wall of the house, through which to give them a 

 passage way. I placed a hive of bees in this room, 

 tlieir entrance into the hive being on a level with 

 this communication, and near to if. To this room 

 I have a door from my garret, never accessible to 

 children or intruders. The room should be made 

 impervious to rats and mice, which are very fond 

 of bees, sparing not even their weapons of defence. 

 This young sv,'arm soon filled their hive, and then 

 commcnceid their operations, beneath, above, and 

 around the hive, filling in their white virgin comb, 

 without the aid of bars, slats or crosspieccs to build 

 to, from the roof of the house to the floor of tlieir 

 room. At times, I stole into this apiary, and by 

 the aid of a light, viewed the progress they were 

 making, and the splendid columns of comb they 

 were erecting. They had the benefit of the labor 

 of all their increase— all -their progeny; there w^as 

 no swarming, no colonizing from this numerous 

 family. Give bees room and they never swarm. 

 Whoever heard of bees swarming from a hollow 

 tree, till the space within was filled .' After the 

 second year of their operations, and during the 

 coldest of the winter, while the bees all laid dor- 

 mant at the centre of their iicvtarinc pih, I took my 

 family stores from the external layers, which al- 

 ways contain the whitest and pnrest in the store- 

 house, and is the only portion which can be taken 

 without injury to the residue. For many years my 

 table was supplied from this room with the choi- 

 cest of sweets, from which many a fritud has en 

 joyed a treat, and lingered to admire this simple 

 contrivance for the preservation of the bee, and the 

 store -house so well adapted to receive the fruits of 

 his labor. 



In lir34 my dwelling house was destroyed by fire, 

 containing, in its garret, at least eight hundred 

 pounds of honey, and of living beings a multitude 

 which no man could number. 



J. S. KEITH. 

 Oxford, Me., Aug. 1839. 



For the Fanner's Mniillily Visiti.r. 



Wonders of the Honey Bee. 



Hon. Isaac Hill: — I am pleased to find y.onr 

 Visitor what I anticipated it would be, the Regis- 

 ter of the agricultural improvements of the day. 

 I have read in it one or two treatises upon Bees, 

 that family of insects which is the pattern of indus- 

 try, system and good order, and which should have 

 their habitations near the dwellings, and before the 

 eyes of every farmer and horticulturist in the 

 country. He who is fond of studying the wonder- 

 ful works of Nature, will find but few subjects, 

 ■which will more excite his curiosity than the his- 

 tory of the Bee. 



The Bee possesses the united skill of the mason, 

 the architect, the geometrician and the civilian. Ma- 

 ny naturalists of this and other countries have de- 

 voted much time in searching out their habits, ad- 

 miring their sagacity, and in giving to the world 



The cultivation of fruit trees 



Is much less attended to than it should be in 

 many parts of New England. Forty years ago the 

 finest flavored jieaches were raised in the vicinity of 

 Boston. A grand uncle, William Hill, at Menoto- 

 my (now West Cambridge) seven miles out of Bos- 

 ton, raised peaches by the hundred bushels as plen- 

 ty as apples are now produced ; and we well re- 

 member the time when the late Judge Tuder, Jo- 

 seph Bnrrell, the Austins and other ancient Bosto- 

 nians, in the season of strawberries, melons and rair- 

 ripes,used to visit the place where that branch of the 

 family of Hills settled more than one hundred 

 years ago, but nearly one hundred years after(lG3G) 

 the patriarch of ilie whole family of Hills in New 

 England (.'Vbraham Hill) first settled in that part 

 of Charlestown below the neck. Peaches arc no 

 longer raised in quantities even in the warmer 

 lands about Boston. The ground in West Cam- 

 bridge where peaches used to grow, still occupied 

 by the descendants of the Hills, is cultivated for 

 other purposes ; nay, the useless ground forty years 

 since, the wild grassed meadow and morass, is there 

 converted by artificial means, by ditching, draining 

 and manuring, into fields often yielding to a single 

 acre its hundred dollars of clear prc'fit in various 

 products for the maj-ket. We are almost a stran- 

 ger to our own kindred on that ground — we left it 

 in the daj^s of mere childhood ; but often in the 

 newspapers has our attention been drawn to the 

 fact that the earliest green peas in the Boston mar- 

 ket have been brought from West Cambridge. A- 

 mong the earliest furnishers to the Boston market 

 for many years have been James and David Hill of 

 West Cambridge ; and some of the first offeri^igs 

 came from the precise ground where William Hill 

 half a century ago planted and reared his beauti- 

 ful ])each orchard : it was upon the south-eastern 

 declivity of the first rise of land westerly of the 

 "Fresh pond" in old Cambridge bordering upon 

 WatertoAvn, where the Frosts, the Hills, the Pien- 

 tlsses, the Wellingtons, the Perrys and the Locks 

 are located. 



The growth of peaches has every where in New 

 Englaiid been partially abandoned within the last 

 twenty-five years. A revolution took i>lace in our 

 climate in 1816 in relation., to the jiroduction of 



fruits of various kinds, so that one half of the pres- 

 ent generation seems to be ignorant of the fact that 

 previous to that time the ellmate'of Massachusetts 

 was then aa prolific of peaches and melons as that 

 of New Jersey at the present time. The frosts of 

 our winters have been too severe for the highly fla- 

 vored frifits : even our apple orchards in exposed 

 positions have been unable to stand against the 

 cold. May we not have reason to hope that the 

 three years preceding 1S3.S carried the wheel of 

 revolution to its utmost point of cold, and that this 

 year was the commencement of a new era in our 

 climate, bringing us back to the warm seasons of 

 half a century ago ;■ Kindly indeed as to the non- 

 production of frost have both the last and present 

 seasons (up to the time of this writing, Sept. 10) 

 held out. If this favorable year is carried out in 

 mildness, it will now be time for every farmer up- 

 on the high grounds who has land favorably lo- 

 cated to commence the rearing of various fruit 

 trees beside the apple — of pears, peaches, plums 

 and cherries. Tile congenial ground will be found 

 in an amphitheatre having the benefit of the full 

 force of the sun where the north winds have not 

 uninterrupted access : the difference of the 

 heat propelling vegetation between a perfect level 

 and a south declivity is strikingly conspicious. The 

 fruit orchard may be put under way with little la- 

 bor ; and the work should be commenced by the 

 planting of nurseries from the original seed. We 

 are of opinion that trees taken from nurseries in a 

 southern latitude will not do well : they arc too ten- 

 der for the climate. This fact may account for tlrc 

 want of success in raising the fruit trees which are 

 brought north from the highly stimulated nurse- 

 ries of Massachunetts and Long Island. It is a 

 well ascertained fact that the same kind of Indian 

 corn (the large Dutton corn forexan:iile) will show 

 a difference ^of a fortnight in growth and ripening 

 whether it be rafsed at Montpelier in Vermont, or 

 at Charlestown in Massachusetts. 



Our agricultural and horticultural friends have 

 reminded us that other fruit than apples have 

 grown the present year in New Hampshire. A 

 box of green gages of the size of moderate apples 

 has been presented by Worcester Webster, Esq. 

 from his garden at Boscawen, in which he has 

 gathered the present season more than twelve bush- 

 els of the beautiful Canada plum, a first rate arti- 

 cle before it is fairly ripe for preserves ; and subse- 

 quently our old acquaintance who did not recog- 

 nize us when we passed him while at his farm at 

 work in Gilmanton, Rufus Parish, Esq., has sent 

 a box of pears of large size and beautiful flavor 

 with the insterstices filled by elegant black dam- 

 son plums. The soil whence these tw-o specimens 

 were produced is entirely different. The garden 

 of Mr. Webster is situated upon the high, light al- 

 luvial ground on the bank of Merrimack river cor- 

 responding very nearly to that of the plains on the 

 easterly sfde of the Merrimack in Concord, and 

 without a pan : the garden and orchard of Capt. 

 Parish arc upon the southern declivity of one of 

 those noble swells ;if land .in Gilmanton whose 

 flinty sub-soil gives assurance that no labor rightly 

 applied to the surface shall be lost in improving it. 



Our own dear New England. 



Among the remnants of the war of the revolu- 

 tion who came to this place to receive their semi- 

 annual stipend on the 4th of September, was the 

 venerable Benjami.> Buarujian, of Bridgewater. 

 He is eighty-nine years of age, and settled ca this 

 elevated ground of Grafton county fifty nineyears 

 ago, when there were but two settlers westward 

 from the river north of Salisbnry and Andover. 

 The whole territory now embraced in the towns of 

 Hill, Alexandria, Bristol and Bridgewater ex- 

 tending more than twenty miles on the Pem- 

 igewasset or Merrimack river, and six miles back, 

 was then called New Chester. Mr. Boardman is a 

 native of Reading, Massachusetts; and when he 

 left the army at the close of the war, he went into 

 the interior and pitched from choice on this high 

 mountain ground before he had a family. His wa- 

 ges as a soldier had depreciated into no value ; and 

 he paid for his first purchase of one hundred acres 

 with wheat which lie raised on the ground, af- 

 ter it was cleared. For the first six years in each 

 summer season, he kept "bachelor's hall" in the 

 rude log house which he firstcrected, clearing land 

 for a crop each successive season: and in the win- 

 ters he went back to Reading and worked at his 

 trade of shoe making. He has lived to erect his 

 third house which is a building of two stories : he 

 married at the age of about thirty-six years, and he 

 now lives with his third wife. By his first wife he 

 had six sons, all of whom are living, one of the 

 younger of whom at forty years of age resides on 

 the farm with him, and three of the others have 



