SS4 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



\No. 9 



quantity of quicklime, which should, however, be 

 cautiously applied, as lime has the effect of de- 

 composing vegetable matter so promptly as to 

 materially lessen its bulk. 



[To be Continued.] 



Extract from an address delivered by A. Stewart, at Oswego. 



WAR VERSUS RAIT, ROADS, COMPARED AS 

 SUBJECTS FOR NATIONAL EXPENDITURES. 



What has been done on thesubject of rail roads 

 and canals in New York, Pensylvania, and Ohio, 

 in the last seventeen years, will exceed all that 

 has been done by Europe from the morning of 

 time. The sister states will be laid under lasting 

 obligation to New York, for her great example in 

 the work of internal improvements, which has 

 given new impulse to the affairs of mankind. 



What better could New York do with the vast- 

 ness of her resources, than judiciously expend 100 

 millions of dollars in rail roads and canals? Every 

 dollar would be quadrupled, in private and public 

 benefit. 



The world has been exhausted by all her re- 

 sources, hitherto, in war and architecture. The 

 war-wasted resources of the world, would have 

 made every inch of land a garden, from the re- 

 gions of eternal ice to the burning line. 



Our late patriotic war cost us one hundred and 

 thirty millions of money, which would have made 

 us ten thousand miles of rail road and canal. 

 Had this one hundred and thirty millions been so 

 appropriated, it would have left my country ahead 

 of the world. 



Look at the waste of public money and human 

 labor, in the useless architecture of the pyramids, 

 those "piles of wonder/' and "sleeping places of 

 death," mere pride and ostentafiou! The proud 

 monarchs by whom built, their names have per- 

 ished from the records of human remembrance; 

 the same labor and money would have united the 

 Nile and Red Sea, the Persian Gulf; and saved 

 the long" and dangerous navigation around the 

 Cape of Good Hope. 



Look at the Languedoc Canal — the only mon- 

 ument likely to rescue the memory of Louis 14th 

 from oblivion; but what was this expenditure com- 

 pared with the waste of money on building the 

 palaces, and making the wild hills of rocks, and 

 fictitious lake at Versailles? — amounting to the 

 enormous sum of tour hundred millions of dollars 

 — a sum sufficient to have brought a rail road 

 and canal to the gate of every city and village in 

 France, and left a direct communication between 

 such city and village, and the Mediterranean 

 and Atlantic. These same palaces at Versailles 

 are now a frightful solitude; nothing is seen but 

 an old decayed officer hobbling over the piles of 

 sculpture and through empty palaces, to show 

 the stranger and travellers those vacant abodes of 

 the departed enemies of man. 



The energies of the Grecian and Roman na- 

 tions were squandered upon those expensive erec- 

 tions of marble which inflamed pride and ambi- 

 tion, without benefiting the commerce of those 

 nations. What would have made ten miles of 

 canal, was expended on the polieh of the columns 

 of a heathen temple. 



Look at modern Europe, covered with abbeys, 

 eastles, and the nonsense of kings, by which the 



power of the nation has been wasted in the pride 

 of architecture. 



The money spent on any one of the thousand 

 wars of Europe would have connected the In- 

 dian ocean with the Mediterranean, and the Pa- 

 cific with the.Atlantic by the Isthmus of Darien; 

 and the too ofien disastrous navigation around 

 Cape Horn and that of Good Hope might have 

 been avoided, and the navigation of the globe 

 shortened one-half. 



UNPRODUCTIVENESS OF THE SKINLESS OAT. 



[The anxiety expressed by many of our correspon- 

 dents to obtain seed of the skinless oats, induced us to 

 write to Messrs. Prince for a parcel, which was de- 

 signed to be distributed gratuitously. We give below 

 an extract from their answer, which furnishes a very 

 different opinion from that generally held of this much 

 praised grain. There can be no better authority on 

 such a subject than Messrs. Prince — and this may be 

 taken as one, added to the numerous previous exam- 

 ples of new products, being cried up as wonders, and 

 | soon after universally admitted to be not worth cul- 

 ture.] 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Register. 



The skinless oat, so far as the results of its cul- 

 ture have been known to us, is the least produc- 

 tive of all the varieties. The quantity of straw, 

 however, is very great — and the abundant vege- 

 tation causes the cultivator to expect an immense 

 crop previous to his harvesting it. Either by de- 

 terioration, by admixture of the pollen of other va- 

 rieties growing adjacent, or from some other 

 cause, there is usually a considerable portion of 

 the crop that is not skinless. Possibly this may 

 arise from the seed sown not having been pure. 

 Certain it is, however, that if the admixture is 

 but in a small proportion when sown, it will far 

 exceed in ratio when harvested. We have not 

 time to add more than this. We have the seed 

 for sale, but we advise no person to sow it for pro- 

 fit. 



Yours very respectfully, 



WM. PRINCE & SONS. 



LinncEan Botanic Garde?}, ? 

 Flushing, Bee. 21, 1835. $ 



PROCEEDINGS OF AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 



[We regret that the following proceedings should 

 have reached us too late for the last No. — and indeec 

 for the extract from the Albemarle transactions, we 

 were at last indebted to a source not official, and a3 late 

 as Dec. 25th. It is desirable, with regard to 

 such proceedings as are designed for this journal, 

 that they should be sent in as early as possible. In this 

 case, the delay of the report on the Agricultural Con- 

 vention, (by the committee of the Albemarle Society,) 

 is a subject of especial regret — and the more so be- 

 cause, in no publication did it come under our obser- 

 vation before this copy was received.] 



