3S MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



be a certain number of " sty " hogs to consume the oiTal of the garden, the 

 truck-patch, the kitchen, the dairy, and the quarters. The number to bear a 

 certain proportion to the number of persons subsisted, and the extent of provision 

 and arrangements for the different objects from which the offal is to be derived. 

 For everv one must be aware, that while no good manager on a farm is without 

 abundance of milk, and butter, and a reasonable variety of wholesome and sub- 

 stantial fruits and vegetables, there are too many, again, who think of nothing 

 but money, and for its sake forego all that money can buy, that is worth having, 

 in the estimation of a reasonable and cultivated mind. Ay, is it not lamentably 

 true, that there are many, very many, large landholders who drudge on through 

 the year, with but a mean, scanty, inadequate supply of milk, butter, vegetables 

 and fruit ?— men who do not look ahead and make provision in time for a good, 

 well-filled dairy, orchard, or garden ; who are often without a pound of fresh, 

 sweet, fragrant butter ; without a nice, clean, cool spring ; without an ice-house ; 

 without a plate of nice strawberries, or cherries, or apples, or pears, or plums, 

 or grapes, or peaches, or a melon, or raspberry, or vegetables, except, perhaps, a 

 few potatoes or drum-head cabbages, when these are everywhere in full season ? 



instead of having, of these plain and substantial things, abundance and to 



spare, for every one, black and white, rich and poor, on his estate ! We do not 

 decry such management, or rather gross and scandalous m«5management, as a 

 thino- of rare occurrence, because then, though it might be more pointedly dis- 

 graceful to the individual, it would not be a stigma to the neighborhood. We 

 deprecate the neglect to which we refer, as a thing too common throughout the 

 country, though less so, we may hope, than it was some years since. Its con- 

 nection with the subject in hand consists in the consideration that where there 

 is this neglect of gardens, and orchards, and dairies for the sake of exclusive (we 

 iiad like to have said a vulgar) devotion to a single staple crop, there can be 

 little or no offal for hogs; and even where an orchard of "sweet apples" is 

 planted " expressly " for hogs, it is to be presumed that at the least three-fourths 

 of the time, and as much of the growth and weight of the hog, must otherwise 

 be provided for. 



In New-England, it is said that good managers consider the manure to be made 

 by a pen of hogs, kept up through the year, as affording an offset against the ex- 

 pense of keeping them ; but this can only be realized, to a certain extent, when 

 the pen is kept well supplied with litter to be compounded with manure, and that, 

 again, can only be done by labor, which, like time, is but another word for money. 



We remember to have seen, last summer, on the road beyond Newburyport, 

 Mass. a very fat, large hog, which might have stood for a picture of health and 

 obesity. Waiting for the cars, we obtained from the owner a brief history of his 

 life and adventures. These were very simple, resembling very much those of 

 other lazy, fat, uneducated simpletons, who dole out their existence in eatino 

 ond sleeping ; but the sum of his big hog's statistics was, in the opinion of the 

 owner, that though he had taken all the offal of his house, he " guessed " he had 

 •"cost more than he would come to ! " so that, after all, " to buy or not to buy 

 —that is the question ; " and it would be curious to see how the calculation of 

 sagacious men would compare, when made under apparently the same circum- 

 stances. Finally, apples may make Yankee " pickled pork " " sweeter and fifty 

 per cent, whiter " than that of corn-fed hogs ; but if you would have " hams " 

 made into bacon " not inferior to Westphalia" — and when hams are spoken of, ba- 

 -con is understood, not pork — let the hogs, according to our observation, which is 



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