NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



and made themselves the first dependents of their 

 earthly lord. 



God gave to man a wife — a helper in his toil. 

 More delicate and beautiful than man, more gentle 

 and more dependent, she won his strong love ; and 

 God lived the man so noble and majestic, and the 

 woman so gentle and amiable. 



The command to subdue the earth rested upon 

 them, and they were virtuous and strong. Sin had 

 not entered, but the soil needed tilling. They had 

 heard the command to cultivate the ground, and 

 stood in readiness to obey. The Creator was 

 pleased, and the angels rejoiced at the sight of such 

 a being as man, as the whole wide eai^h became 

 his charge and gift. He appeared as first practi- 

 tioner in the art of husbandry, and president of the 

 great agricultural society of earth and time. Such 

 was our first father before he sinned, and such was 

 the origin of agriculture, before sin entered into 

 the world. 



While man was yet in his innocence, God was 

 pleased to provide for him a special source of en- 

 j. tyment. It was by the institution of Horticulture 

 and Aboriculture. "The Lord God planted a gar- 

 den eastward in Eden ; and there he put the man 

 whom he had formed. And out of the ground 

 made the Lord God to grow every tree that is 

 pleasant to the sight and good for food." "And 

 the Lord God took the man and put him in the 

 garden of Eden , to dress it and to keep it. " Such 

 was the origin of Horticulture. 



Upon the farmer and the gardener has the bless- 

 ing of God rested, even health and peace, since the 

 morning stars sang together for joy. He who fol- 

 lows their way is the first in obedience to the com- 

 mand of God, the first in enjoyment of heavenly 

 blessings, first in usefulness to his species, and first 

 in the proper dignity of his calling. 



Upon the savage who breaks not the soil with a 

 cultivating hand, the curse of heaven rests ; and as 

 the declining day loses its last lingering life when 

 the sun goes down in darkness, so sinks away the 

 tribe of that chief who teaches not his hands to till 

 the ground, nor his young men to break the matted 

 turf. The sons of the wild hunter of the forest 

 will not be, and from his wigwam will arise no 

 curling smoke ; but the joyous and hardy sons of 

 the farmer shall appear as the sands of the sea in- 

 numerable ; and the hymn of Praise to God, and 

 the shout of freedom for man, mingling earth's 

 gladness with heaven's joyfulness, shall swell 

 higher and higher from the cultivated fields and the 

 vine-clad bower, when the savage and the slave 

 and the fop and the fool are seen as exceptions to 

 the producing designs of creative wisdom and good- 

 ness. 



Granite Farmer. — This paper comes to us this 

 week with its face all washed and a new jacket on 

 with appropriate ornaments. It is published at 



Manchester, N. II., edited by Dr. T. R. Crosby, 

 and filled with excellent reading for the persons for 

 whom it is intended. The people who can make 

 such a show as they presented at their late State 

 Fair, in N. II., are able to sustain a paper relating 

 to their own affairs both with purse and pen. In 

 his address the editor says : — " There is no earth- 

 ly reason why the young farmer should not be as 

 intelligent, as well educated, as well suited to 

 adorn society and become its ornament, as the 

 young man of any profession, and that too without 

 at all depreciating his manhood or his ability to la- 

 bor." We say so too. 



THE CHEMISTRY OF NATURE, 



If we trace back the history of our world into 

 those remote eras of which the early rocks are re- 

 cords, we shall discover that the same chemical 

 laws were operating then which control the changes 

 of matter now. At one period the earth was a 

 huge mass of fiery fluid, which radiating or throw- 

 ing off heat into spaces, gradually cooled, and be- 

 came surrounded with a solid crust, entombing 

 within a seething of chaos of intensely heated ma- 

 terials, which now assert their existence in the 

 shock of the earthquake, and the awful outbreaks 

 of volcanic fires. In latter ages, when the crust 

 had cooled still more, and the atmosphere let fall 

 its showers, the still heated surface, hissing and 

 roaring with tie contact of the flood, was rent in- 

 to enormous blocks, and dreadful abysses — which 

 still remain all over the world, and form the 

 w indrous monuments of an a e of great convul- 

 sions. 



Later still, the seas gathered together, the rocky 

 masses were powdered into dust by the delicate 

 fingers of the dew and the showers, the green 

 herbs sprang up, and the monsters of the slimy 

 deep appeared in obedience to the Creator's fiat, 

 and the whole earth became a home of beauty in 

 obedience to chemical law. The ceaseless play of 

 the elements, and the mutations of the atoms, had 

 built up the whole into one gorgeous scene of lux- 

 uriance ; and man was awakened into being to ren- 

 der the whole subservient to his wishes ; and, by 

 tracing out the harmonies of the natural world, 

 to arrive at a more exalted knowledge of his 

 Maker. 



The atom of charcoal which floated in the cor- 

 rupt atmosphere of the old volcanic ages was ab- 

 sorbed in the leaf of a fern, when the valleys be- 

 came green and luxuriant ; and there in its proper 

 place it received the sunlight and the dew, aiding 

 to fling back to heaven a reflection of heaven's 

 gold, and at the same time to build the tough fibre 

 of the plant. That same atom was confined to the 

 tomb when the waters submerged the jungled val- 

 leys. It had lain three thousands of years, and a 

 month since was brought to light again, imbedded 

 in a block of coal. It shall be consumed to warm 

 our dwellings, cook our food, and make more ruddy 

 and cheerful the hearth whereon our children play : 

 it shall combine with a portion of the invisible at- 

 mosphere, ascend upwardsas a curling wreath io 

 revel in a mazy dance up high in the blue ether — 

 shall reach earth again, and be entrapped in the 

 embrace of a flower — shall live in a velvet beauty 

 on the cheek of an apricot — shall pass into the hu 

 man body, giving enjoyment to the palate, and 



