<JI)c Javmcr's iUontl)ln bisitov. 



39 



[ivailable; there must hn jiKlfrniont in the n|)|)li- 

 c'llidri ol'thc cx|i(,'rifiK-u ol'olhiTs. Some there 

 ;ire who liini their hiioks ii|)()ii houk Uiiowledjie, 

 as ihey tmn it, anil cniiliMi,' themselves lo prac- 

 tice ahme, hilt their very praclire is iiiostly learii- 

 eil fmiii otiiers — it is a sort of hereililary theory 

 liom Falher to Son, ti oiii one person to aiiollier, 

 anil this always liills short of the iinilril ainoiint 

 of tlieory and praelico together. iMany quite 

 clever oll'-luiiideiilawyers have lieen produced 

 hy altendiiif; Coinis ; Init itie ornanients to the 

 profession have ever heen those w ho Hrstj laiil 

 the foiinilatioii deep in iln' theory and elenieiita- 

 rj' piiiiciples, and llien applied those [iriiieiples 

 with sound jnd;;ment in practice. Theory may 

 fnrlher he considi.'red as the poetry of the sci- 

 ence; practice as ihe plain prose of a^'riciilline ; 

 and tlie Thcoral, liKi: Ihe I'oet, when there is hut 

 iheory, has rather a spare crop and a lean diet. 

 So half the pleasure which is more tl'an money 

 wealth to the farmer, is never felt liy him wlio is 

 all practice, no fancy, no eye (i>r Ihe heauties 

 iinil hlossoins ofsprini:, who does not sympathise 

 wiili the joyous hirds, ami w ho never stoops lo 

 pluck the lilossoms from the enameled hank of 

 spring. The two miisl lie lilended — theory and 

 practice, poetry and prose, fancy and fact — to 

 make the prosperous happy liirmer, the oriui- 

 nemt to sociely, a hlessim: to his race, the nohlest 

 prndnciion lo a homilifiil I'rovidencc. VVe are 

 oil the increase, as we helieve, of tliis class of 

 men. Agrienluire is on the advance, and oiit- 

 linmheriiii,' a» the farmers do, all oilier classes in 

 our land, they have Ihe means, and most of them 

 we Iriist enjoy a large and full share of llic hles- 

 siiiL's of life. R. 



I'rom tlic :?oljtheril Cultivator. 



Dkep I'lol'uhing. — I had a field of 13 acres, 

 nalnrally very poor, (so much so, that the first 

 nalnral production was a poor growth of sheep 

 sornd, a cerlain iiidicarion of slerilily,) w liich I 

 intended lo put in wheat. The .summer was 

 soiiieiliiiig like the last, excessively dry. When 

 the time arrived for hreaUIng up ihi.s field, it was 

 no hard that a plough wiili two horses could not 

 lie got into the ground. Four horses were tried 

 withonl success. A coulter was tried with two 

 horses, hut the draft was too great, and four 

 horses eiiahled the plowman to break up the 

 field. 



The wealher continued dry, and when it was 

 time to sow the wheat, ihe /doughs were put in- 

 to ihe field plunghed with the coulter, and it 

 ploughed well. The wheat was sown; no man- 

 urn was applied. The wheat when harvested 

 was a very mlerahle crop — for such poor land, 

 very good — and there were many jdaces frniii 10 

 to 20 yards square, covered with Itiruricnt clover. 

 No seed could li.ave hecii on the land, and how 

 it came to grow, can only he solved hy future ex- 

 piM'iments, 



Tlii> idea tliatslrnck me (which I would like to 

 see iiivesligaled hy some more scicniific experi- 

 nienl.-disl,) was, that the plough having reached 

 deep iiilo the clay hoitoin (ihe top-soil was de- 

 I'omposed granite, or coarse gravel,) the clay at- 

 Iracled nitre from the atmosphere, and thus caus- 

 ed the growth of clover, which it is believed will 

 only grow on l.iiuls enliivate<l tor some time and 

 manured. New land will not produce clover if 

 very rich. 15. 



Tlaughin^. 



'I"h6 first and most general operation lo which 

 iIk; soil is subject, is ploughing. Man must have 

 heen early taught that, in oriler to render the 

 earth prodiiclive, it must he tilled; and it would 

 he extremely euriniis, if the materials of such 

 history were allainahle, lo trace the progress of 

 improvement liom the first instrument employed 

 to slir the earth to the present beautiful and in- 

 genious iniplement, by wdiich acre.s, and miles 

 ot acres, are at idea^ino inverted. It would be 

 interesling to know how the North American In- 

 dians eiillivaled their corn (maize) when the coun- 

 try was discovered ; tradiliun has not preserved 

 lilt traces of ihe method which they adopted. 

 Their implements must have been few, and of 

 the most simple descriplioii. 'I'lic smooth stones, 

 some ol which 1 have myself linmd in places 

 known as their liivorite liamits, of a we<lge shape, 

 may have been used for digging the ground for 

 the deposite of the seeil, and perhaps for keep- 

 ing the soil loose round the plants: near the sea- 



shore a clam-slieli may have answered the same 

 pnr[iose. Of weeds, pridiahly Ihey bad few to 

 conlend with, as the land was new and not sur- 

 charged with manure, of which pcrhapslhey did 

 not know the use, since, within the memory of 

 persons now living, farmers in the vicinity of Al- 

 lianv were acciisloiiied lo carl iho manure from 

 iheir barns on lo ihe Iliiilson when frozen, and in 

 the neighborhood of Montreal on to the St. Law- 

 rence, that, at the breaking of the ice in the 

 spring, it might he carried away by the ."tream. 

 Kven much mon^ recently, in some parts of ihe 

 comilry, liiriiiers, when they have found ihe piles 

 of inaiime round their barns accuiiiulale<l lo an 

 inconvenient size, havi^ preferred to desert them, 

 and build other barns, nilher than be at the trou- 

 ble and cxp('nse of lemoviiig lliese heaps. One 

 is often amused at hearing people boast ot' '' the 

 wisdom of our ancestors ;" and to be consistent, 

 we should expect to see such persons adjusting 

 the erpiilihrium of a liag of grain upon the horse's 

 hack hy pulling the corn in one end and a stone 

 in ihe other. 



When I come lo treat of the implements of 

 husbjindry, I shall describe an English plough; 

 at [iresent I have to deal only with the operation 

 itself 



1 think I may say thai, in England am! Scot- 

 land, the art of ploughing has reached perfec- 

 tion, and that it is unrivalled and unsurpassable. 

 This at least is my opinion, w hieh must be taken 

 at what it is worth. I cannot conceive how it 

 can be improved ; and lliis not in rare instances, 

 and at idoughing inatcbes, but 1 may say univer- 

 sally. In some cases, the wmk has been done 

 belter than in others; hull have not seen an ex- 

 ample of bad ploughing in the country; I have 

 not fieen one vvhicli, in the L'uiied States, would 

 not he pronounced superior. — Caiman's l^gricul- 

 tural Tour. 



Is Indian Corn — Maize — a Native of this 

 Country 1 



This rpieslion, a highly interesling one in nat- 

 ural history, is sometimes asked, and wiihoiit 

 having |iarlicularly or crilically looked into the 

 matter, we have always answered that it was. 

 Such has been our general aiu\ imdoiihting im- 

 pression. We believe that along our Allaiilic 

 i)orders, it was found by ihe first European visit- 

 ors, as consiiinting the staple upon which the 

 natives depende<l, when the products of the chase 

 fiiiled. It was limited lo be sure in ils cultiva- 

 tion, not only because Ihe forecast of the Indian 

 was proverbially deficient, but also because his 

 implemenls were necessarily of the rudest kind. 

 The use of iron, we must recollect, was un- 

 known, and ilie spailc could only have been liirni- 

 ed by chiselling the sloiie into something like a 

 shape, that would admit of its penetrtiting the 

 earth. We make the following extract from the 

 Farmer's Encyclopetlia : — 



"Although America is doubtless the native 

 country of a plant so important to her interests, 

 still this has been a disjiuted point. Fiichs very 

 early maintained that it came from the East; and 

 iNlalhioli alfirmed lliat it was from America. Keg- 

 mir and Gregory have presented fresh arguments 

 in favor of its Eastern origin. Among them is 

 the name by which it has long been known in 

 Europe, Ble de Turquic ; and varielies, it is said, 

 have been brought liom the Isle of France, or 

 from China. iMoreaii de Joniies, on the contra- 

 ry, has recently nminiained, in a memoir read 

 before the Academy of Science, that its origin 

 was in America. The name Bk de Turquic, no 

 more proves it to he of Turkish origin, than the 

 name of the Indian Poplar or Irish potaloe, 

 [iroves that the tree and tlio plant grew wild in 

 Italy and Ireland. It can only signify that it 

 spread from Turkey into the neighboring coun- 

 tries, lis general culfnaiion in Sonlln.'rn Europe; 

 and the produciion of some new varielies, proves 

 nothing wiih regard lo the country of the spe- 

 cies. In favor of iis American origin, is the fact 

 tliat it was iViiiiid in a slate of ciihivalion in eve- 

 ry place where the first navigators landed : in 

 Mexico, according lo Ueriiandezj anil in Brazil, 

 according to Zeri ; and that in lite various coun- 

 tries it had proper names, such as Maize, Flnolli, 

 &c.: whilst, in the Old World, its names were 

 either all of American origin, or from the neigh- 

 boring region, whence it was derived. Immedi- 

 ately after the discovery of A mcrica, it was spread 

 rapidly in the Old World, and soon becaiTie com- 



mon, a fiict not reconcilable with the idea of its " 

 former existence there. To these proofs, Aug. 

 de Saint-Hilaire has added anoiher. He has re- 

 ceived from M. de Larraiihaga, of Monte Video, 

 a new variety ofmaize, distinguished by the name 

 of Timicata ; because instead of having the 

 grains naked, they are entirely covered by the 

 glumes. Tlii." variety is fioni Paraguay, where 

 it is cultivated liy the GiKiycurus Indians, a peo- 

 ple in the losvest scale of civilization ; and where, 

 according to the direct testimony of one of them, 

 it grows in the hunird forests as a native produc- 

 tion. 



" The early authors who liave written about 

 America, with few if any exceptions, mention 

 maize as an indigenous grain. Thus Acoste, in 

 bis jYatvrnl History of the ll'est Indies, calls it 

 ' Indian wheat, to make bread of,' and says 'that it 

 was the only grain Ibund in the West Indies by the 

 Europeans; that it grows upon n long reed with 

 large grains, ami sometimes two ears on a reed, 

 on one of which 700 grains have been toM ; that 

 they sow it grain by grain, and not scattering, aa 

 is done with wheat ; anri it reipiires a hot and 

 moisl soil. There are two sorts of it,' says our 

 author, 'one large and substantial, ihe other small 

 and dry, which they call moroche. The leaves of 

 it and also the reed are very good food for cattle, 

 green ; and dry, it serves as well a.s straw. The 

 grain is better for beasts than barley, but they 

 must drink before they eat it; for if they drink 

 after it, it swells and gives them pain. The In- 

 dians eaS it hot, boiled, and call it mote, and some- 

 times toasted. There is a sort of it large and 

 round, which the Spaniards eat toasted ; they al- 

 so grind it and make cakes, which they cat hot ; 

 and these, in some places, they call arc/)fr5. They 

 also make bread, lo keep, and sweet cakes of it.' 



"As Acoste died in 1600, at Salamanca, in his 

 sixtieth year, this must he regarded as very early 

 testimony upon ilie subject. He surely woulj 

 not have heen so very particular in his descrip- 

 tion of Ibis grain had it heen previously known 

 in Europe. Indeed entire ears of Indian corn 

 have been found enveloped in Peruvian and Mex- 

 ican mmnmies, preserved long before the discov- 

 ery of America. 



"It is probable that some inferior species of the 

 genus lo which maize belongs, have been found 

 in Guinea, Turkey, and olher portions of the Old 

 World ; but that the kinds now so highly valued 

 and generally cultivated were of American origin, 

 there can be no doubt, both from the strongest 

 negative and positive evidence. Rlaize is now 

 extensively cultivated in Asia and Africa. In 

 Europe, it is only in the extreme southern parts, 

 France, Spain, "and Italy, that the crop can bo 

 raised so as to be profitable." 



The authorities cited above, are considered 

 pretty conclusive in the matter. In an essay on 

 Indian corn, which may be found in the 2nd vol- 

 ume of the Farmers' Cabinet, and which was de- 

 livered by Peter ,\. Browne, lM>fore the Chester 

 County Cabinet of Natural Science, the writer 

 says he "has taken extraordinary parns to ascer- 

 tain its history," and after he has given the de- 

 tails, he thinks it easy to pronounce, to what ])or- 

 tion of the globe the rest of the world is indebt- 

 ed for Indian corn. He cites numerous authori- 

 lies, the general bearing of which, undoubtedly 

 is, that the plant in question is a native of Amer- 

 ica. Robertson in his History of America, speaks 

 of the natives of the Southern continent confin- 

 ing their industry to rearing a few iilants, which 

 in a rich soil and warm climate were easily train- 

 ed to maturity. " The chief of these," says he, 

 " is ynitize, well known in Europe hy the natne of 

 Turkey or Indian wheat, a grain extremely pro- 

 lific, and of simple culture." 



Prescott in his Conquest of Mexico — and we 

 consider him a careful investigator — says "the 

 great staple of the country, as indeed of the 

 .American continent, was maize, or Indian corn, 

 which grew freely along the vallies, sud up tlie 

 sleep sides of the Cordilleras to the high level of 

 the table land." And Baron Humboldt, insists 

 that it was found by the Europeans in the New 

 World from the south of Chili to Pennsylvania, 

 and, says Prescott, '• he miglit have added to the 

 St. Lawrence," for the Puritan emigrants found 

 it on the New England coast, wherever they lan- 

 ded. 



We raise annually, in the United Stales from 

 four to five hundred millions of bushels of this 

 noble grain. It has somelimes been termed the 



