104 



®l)c JTarmcr's iHontljlij llisitor. 



grub passes through its changes and is ready to 

 come out the perl'ect insect with the first warmth 

 of spring. Jt is ascertained from examiniuion of 

 peas brought to the New Haven market green 

 i'or summer eating, as well as those brought dry 

 for seed, that nearly one lialfare buggy. I am 

 sorry to be obliged to make this statement to 

 lovers of green peas. The iiijiuy to this article 

 of culture lias heeri so great in this vicinity, that 

 fanners have ceased to grow it as one of their com- 

 mon field crops. This is much to he regretted, as 

 the pea can be cultivated with little labor, and may 

 be made, to a great extent, to supply the i)l»ce of 

 the more costly Indian corn, in feeding swine 

 and sheep. Fortunately the means of entire pro- 

 tection against this insect are at our comuiand. 

 They are tnerely 'putting all yonr peas, as soon as 

 dry, into a light hug, and keeping them there one 

 yeiir, that is, beyond the next JhUoimng summer. — 

 This will efTeclnaliy oxterniinate your pea-bugs, 

 for the time being. Hut in this case as in many 

 others, we need a concert of action. All should 

 adopt the same practice; if that is done, there is 

 little doubt but the whole rare of pea-bugs would 

 in a few years become extinct. Without con- 

 cert, the practice would be lound beneficial by 

 every one who adojus it. In my own garden the 

 iiiMiiber of buggy peas has been reduced from 

 one in two to one in seventeen. If any one feel 

 reluctance to sowing old peas, he may rest as- 

 sured that they are perl'eclly good for seed when 

 two years old, if kept in a dry place. The bugs 

 may be killed by scalding; hut there are objec- 

 tions to that practice. We wish to prevent the 

 bugs from escaping into the garden or field. — 

 They must therelijre be destroyed as early as the 

 middle of wifiier. Scalding them will injure 

 the peas both lor keeping and for sowing. ]f 

 scalding is postponed, many of the bugs vvill es- 

 cape and our whole object he defeated. 



Another insect destructive of the crops of the 

 farmer is the Cut-worm. Like the Pea-bug it is 

 a familiar acquaintan(!e of most persons. With- 

 out a particular examination we should take the 

 cut-worms to be all of the same species. But 

 Dr. Harris has discovered five species, (Agrotis 

 Ulifera, inermis, }nessoria, tessalata and devastator,) 

 ami has described one more, (Noclua clandetina.) 

 I have recently discovered, as 1 suppose, another, 

 different from all the rest. They all commit their 

 depredations in the same manner, by eating off 

 plants near the ground, in the night— culting 

 them down as a woodman fells a tree. They 

 conceal themselves during the day, generally in 

 the earth. These worms are transformed into 

 inotljs, or millers, of different colors and mark- 

 ings. The moths cannot be described to you so 

 that you would know them fiom description a- 

 lone. Their mischief i^ excessively provoking 

 as well as injurious, for it .seems, from the man" 

 ner in which it is committed, to he a wanton de- 

 struction. They cut off the lininer's corn, pota- 

 toes and buck-wficat; the gardener's peas, beans, 

 onions, beets, cucinuhers, cabbages, and every 

 other garden vegetable ; and spare not even the; 

 choice productions of the flower border. Their 

 history is not lidly known. The moths un- 

 doubtedly lay their eggs in the ground, in smu- 

 mer or autumn ; but whether these hatch before 

 spring is not ascertained, though there are reasons 

 for believing that they hatch in auliMMU and that 

 the larvas crawl below frost to pass the winter.— 

 The first that appear in spring are loo large to 

 have been hatched then. To deierniine whether 

 they do descenil into iho earlh on Ihe approach 

 of winter, is well worthy of our researches.— 

 The nuudjcr of eggs laid by a moth is probably 

 more than thirty ; for thai mindier of younir 

 worms has been found at the root ofa transplau'^ 

 ted radish, all .-ippearing of the same age and 

 family. It has beiMi attempted, on a stnall scah?, 

 to preserve [larticular plains liy spreading salt 

 or <pncklime aromid tlieui, or" by surroinidini; 

 them with a roll of paper or leather set up on(r- 

 wise. On a larger s<-ale, sowing salt over the 

 fields, and ploughing in the fall, have been re- 

 commended. Hut noua of tliese remedies has 

 proveil effectual. The best course hilherio pur- 

 sued for (heir desti-uclion is, to dig Ihem out of 

 the earth every day and give Hum to the chickens.— 

 Tfio worms may be liaujil at the fijot of the plan; 

 wliich they have bittuu off mdcss it is too small 

 to have given them a full meal, in which case, 

 after travelling along the rows till tlicir appetite 

 JS satisfied, they have probably retired to u bIioI- I 



ter somewhat remote. At the time when beets, 

 onions, parstjips and ether plants from small 

 seeds are coming uji, it is uselid to leave in the 

 alleys heaps of light and fine rubbish, frotn which 

 the worms may he raked every morning. By 

 this means the unaccountable disappearance of 

 whole beds of young plants, may sometimes be 

 prevented. Taking the worms by baud may 

 seem to the farmer, who has acres of cro|i» to be 

 protected, to be a tedious or even hopeless pro- 

 j('Ct. But no man wljo makes faithful trial of it, 

 will find himself unprofilalily employeil. 



CONCORD, N. H., JULY 31, 1S46. 



'•Old Virginia never tire!" 



Virginia has been emplialically called the 

 "Mother of States": this is a compliment due to 

 her as furniihmg more than her full share of the 

 men of eminence, shining as the fathers of our 

 Republic, the authors and finishers of the great- 

 est and best principles giving life and stability to 

 the Constitution. Not less favored has she been 

 as the mother which lujrtured men, a Washing- 

 ton and a Henry, a Jefferson and a Madison, than 

 in the soil whose virgin fertility created her first 

 wealth, enabling her patriots to take and main- 

 tain the stand in the revolution which added the 

 entire Atlantic Slates of Ihe South .-is a most 

 valuable part of our Union. Was the whole face 

 of the coiniiry now open for emigration and set- 

 tlement, no portion of the territory of the great 

 Repidilic would present fairer inducements for 

 settlement than the Ancient Dominion. With a 

 climate congenial to the [)roduction of the lar- 

 gest portion of articles necessary to the cotnfort 

 and sustenance of man, covering an extent of 

 rivers and hays, moimlains, plains and valleys, 

 greater than any other State of tfje Union, if she 

 could, along with the other States, again .«tart 

 anew under equal enterprise, and with similar 

 regulations, we might perha|)S anticipate for her 

 a more glorious career than that of the most, if 

 not all of her sisters, because there is every thing 

 grand in her scenery, and nature has done every 

 thing fur her in the commeiu'ement. 



The "mother of States" was great in the be- 

 ginning. Although pro!)ably not in advance of 

 the Pilgrim fathers of New England, in point of 

 intellect, wealth at first |)oiued in greater abund- 

 ance into the Virginian lap. Slaves from Africa 

 were there first introduced as a gjatitication to 

 the ease of wealthy indolence: slaves introduced 

 into New England, with a more severe climate, 

 and a more sterile soil, so far from jjauipering 

 iiulolence, could scarcely subsist upon the entire 

 avails of slave labor. For this cause our British 

 ancestors, as a measuje of human cupidity, fjist- 

 ened slavery upon the milder region, and (iiiled 

 to establish it on the poorer soil and colder cli- 

 mate. 



Strange it is, in the vicissitudes of human af- 

 fairs, ihat apparently tiivorable circumstances 

 slioidd be a cur.sc in the one case, and seeming- 

 ly unliivoralile events the SJilvation in another. 

 To the positions in which the Inst settlers were 

 thrown, rather than to any difference in their 

 character as individuals, may we atlrihulo that 

 train of evejits, which in all the points of jiros- 

 periiy and euter[nise, now give New England an 

 advantage over Virginia. 



In the lapse of a few gcneratious, much of the 

 wealth of the planters of Eastern Virginia has 

 been dissipated. Up to the lime of the revolu- 



tion, she probably furnished a greater foreign ex- 

 port than the whole of New England and New 

 York. Under the <-ultivation of slave labor, up- 

 on the exhausting system, lands become soonest 

 exhausted. The idea seems to have run through 

 Eastern Virginia, that the means do not exist for 

 retrieving exhausted lands. Upon these, in nu- 

 merous cases, master and slaves have been lite- 

 rally starved out. Custom has made it the habit 

 ot the white popidation there to avoid manual 

 labor as ihe greatest degradation ; and the |)hysi- 

 cal energies of the colored race have suffered 

 diminution in pro|)ortion to the starvation, forced 

 by the inability of their masters to feed them. 



Such being the state of things, can it be won- 

 dered that plantations are abandoned there, and 

 that both the masters and their slaves should find 

 relief in the ability to run into debt for the pur- 

 chase of lands in the cotton and sugar-growing 

 regions, where much less labor will enable all to 

 be better clothed and fed, and in most cases re- 

 store to the descendant, the easy wealth which 

 the first Virginia settlers cnjil^'ed ? The settle- 

 ments of new States and Territories for such a 

 purpose, could be set down as hardly less hu- 

 mane than African colonization or immediate 

 emancipation, without the obligation of personal 

 support. AVhat has been the condition of John 

 Randolph's slaves, set free by one of the several 

 testamentary devises of that eccentric man, after 

 long litigation, with the means of sufiport which 

 happened to remain to him, appropriated in the 

 same devise or will .' Emigrating to a neighbor- 

 ing free State, in a body, with the means of sup- 

 port carried along with them, they are denied a 

 comfortable place of residence — they are warned 

 off as fugitives in a State whose laws deny that 

 guarantee si>ecified as one of the compronusesof 

 the Constitution, which should protect the mas- 

 ter in his right of property to the slave. 



Now that, without efforts from abroad, slavery 

 is expelling itself from Virginia as a matter of 

 necessity, in that State a vista is opening which 

 will make of her future population whatever 

 philanlhropy could wish. All that is wanted to 

 make Virginia a most desirable point for iiorlh- 

 eru emigration, is the introduction of those faci- 

 lities and conveniences which necessity has in- 

 troduced at the North. How much would the 

 value of the soil of Virginia be raised, if in her 

 whole extent, she possessed the roads of New 

 England, the common roads and tmiipikes, as 

 well as the railroads? Far belter would he the 

 mountainous wilds of V'irginia, her hills and val- 

 leys, of practicable ascent and descent, as a 

 place of emigration, than some of the favored 

 prairies and forests of the West. These wild 

 lands in Virginia might be purchased for the 

 merest trifle, the clearing of which woidd open 

 perhaps the best grazing country in the United 

 Stales. 



But the following article from the Philadelphia 

 Farmers' Cabinet, has reference more especially 

 to that part of \irginia eastward of the lilue 

 Ridge. Of this we arc able to speak in relation 

 to a single county, bordering on the District of 

 Columbia, a part of which is oniluaceil in the 

 once bcHuiiful plantations of Mount Vernon. 

 Some ten years ago this county of Fairfax may 

 he said to have been literally exhausted under 

 slave labor: it fiirnished not even the means of 

 subsistence to a scattered and constaully decreas- 

 ing popidation, had the country been deprived of 

 the privilege of taking shad and alewives from 

 the Potomac and the creeks which bordered the 

 county. A beginning of purchase and removal 



