FARM IMPROVEMENTS. 65 



less bog, has been rendered, for the time being, attractive 

 and useful, giving an added cash value to the ancient home- 

 stead, and affording to its owners, as well as to the passers- 

 by, a decided improvement in the features of their somewhat 

 limited landscape. Every experiment of this nature may be 

 considered under two aspects : as a matter of taste, and as a 

 matter of profit and loss. In most farming communities, 

 mere matters of taste, or, in other words, considerations of 

 beauty, order or symmetry as sources of pleasurable emotion, 

 are made wholly subordinate to more familiar, and doubtless 

 more congenial, considerations relating to probable final bal- 

 ances in dollars and cents. The truth of this proposition will 

 become sufficiently apparent upon an inspection of the sur- 

 roundings of many a farmer's home. Fences awry, fence- 

 rails broken, wall-stones displaced, roadsides surrendered to 

 bushes and brambles, door-yards encumbered with useless 

 debris, fields disfigured with mullen and wild-carrot, water- 

 stagnating in adjacent pools ; — these, and such as these, are 

 sights almost too common to excite even a passing remark. 

 By merely proving, to one who permits them, that their 

 existence is offensive to good taste, nothing will be effected 

 towards their removal. But once convince him that su«-- 



o 



gested improvements in any of these respects will put 

 money in his purse, and such improvements will be com- 

 menced forthwith, and completed without needless delay. 



While this tendency to disregard all considerations, except 

 those of mere profit and loss, is so generally manifested by 

 farmers in planning and prosecuting their ordinary or extraor- 

 dinary agricultural operations, especial credit should be given 

 to such among them as manifest a determination to begin and 

 to complete the improvement of some of the waste places of 

 the earth, even at the risk of a possible deficiency in their re- 

 ceipts as compared with their expenditures. Whether or not 

 Mr. Latham shall finally realize any considerable profit from 

 the above described experiment, he will, doubtless, derive a 

 great deal of satisfaction from the investment, in its aesthetic 

 results, as well as from the conviction he seems to have reached, 

 that money may sometimes be wisely expended for other ends 

 than its own mere reproduction. 



But the pecuniary aspects of experiments of this nature are, 



9* 



