550 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



mation. History has offered nothing like him, 

 and you may go the wide world over, ransacking 

 ail nations, without encountering his parallel. 

 Circumstances have created him, and although 

 they operate on the newly landed immigrant, as- 

 tonishing him, in time, with the fact, that his 

 head can think of two things, and his hands do a 

 dozen, they can never mould him into the think 

 of every thing, natural growth of the soil. The 

 real native turns his hand to any thing, lays the 

 foundations of a city with an axe and a jackknife, 

 unites all trades in his own person, whenever it is 

 most convenient to do so, it being a matter of un- 

 concern to him whether he shoes himself or his 

 ox, builds a house for his family or a sty for his 

 pigs, holds a plough or tends a spinning jenny, 

 goes a lumbering or to the Legislature, opens tav- 

 ern or keeps school. lie is farmer, trader, carpen- 

 ter, mason, shoemaker, blacksmith, and legisla- 

 tor ; and is ready to give instruction in either, 

 including most other branches of human knowl- 

 edge. If he wants an article, he makes it, and if 

 the right thing has never been made before, he in- 

 vents it for the occasion, never dreaming that he 

 is doing what is not, of course, done by all other 

 men. He longs for foreign travel, concludes to 

 see the world, and indulges in the episode of a 

 four years whaling voyage ; hears of California, 

 and, in a few months, is whittling on the banks of 

 the Sacramento, finding it more profitable to let 

 others dig, and trade for the proceeds. He is 

 slow to wrath, and can endure much, when it is 

 against his interest to show fight. The thing is, 

 however, in him, as may be ascertained, by pain- 

 ful experience, by pressing him beyond his bear- 

 ings. He has a reverence for wealth, and a de- 

 cided inclination to convey as much of it as pos- 

 sible into his own keeping ; thinks well of educa- 

 tion, and has great respect for learning, when it 

 does not cost too much, but grumbles if it in- 

 creases the tax bill, and is apt, for the time, to 

 manifest, like the spiritual rappers, a ghostly in 

 difference for such minor matters as orthography 

 and syntax. He has great economy of time, 

 grudges the last hours given to sleep and food, 

 takes the fastest boat, the chances of blowing up 

 being quite a secondary consideration to that of 

 landing a few minutes earlier ; wonders why the 

 train goes so slowly, when it is tearing along its 

 thirty miles an hour, and rises from his seat the 

 moment its speed slackens, fearing that somebody 

 may, somehow or other, have an advantage over 

 him by getting out first. He has a natural inborn 

 courtesy to woman, gives up his comfortable seat 

 in coach or car without a murmur, considers that 

 she has, indisputably, the best right to the best 

 things, and has more real gallantry than existed 

 in all the cutthroat days of chivalry. 



There, if any can do better than that, we have 

 never seen it. It is a perfect portrait. 



few scattered stalks with scullion bottoms, rotten 

 and full of maggots. On inquiring, we found that 

 the full grown onions had been sprinkled with 

 tar water. An equal quantity of hot water and 

 tar were stirred together, and after standing a few 

 hours, the fluid part was sprinkled upon the on- 

 ions on one of the beds. This application was 

 made in June, when the young plants were first at- 

 tacked by the fiy, and the process repeated about 

 two weeks afterwards. The result was a fine crop 

 upon that bed, while upon the other, not a single 

 onion was raised. — White River Advertiser. 



For the New England Farmer. 



FREAK OF NATURE. 



Mr. Brown : — Dear Sir, — We send you by bear- 

 er two apples, one a Baldwin as you will see, the 

 other a Russet. They were raised by Mr. Rogers, 

 of Watertown, who found when picking his apples 

 two kinds as appeared to him, and as it really 

 proves, on one limb. It being a small limb, he cut 

 it off, to show to his friends ; we saw this limb, 

 and from it he picked four Russets such as we send 

 you, also three Baldwins, one of which we send 

 you ; this limb, the end that was cut off, was some 

 fifteen feet from the trunk of the tree, and as the 

 Russets and Baldwins grew upon the same small 

 limb, there is no way to account for it but by say- 

 ing it was a freak of nature, and a strange one 

 too. You will notice that the Russet is marked 

 somewhat with the red color of the Baldwin, though 

 in other respects it does not differ from common 

 Russets. On the side of the tree on which these 

 apples grew, stands a Russet tree the limbs of 

 which are intermingled with the Baldwin. 



The above are facts, though not written for pub- 

 lication. Yours respectfully, 



James Hyde & Son. 



Newton Centre, Oct. 30, 1852 



ONIONS. 



Mr. Benjamin Clifford, of Norwich, has succeed- 

 ed in protecting this valuable root from the rava- 

 ges of the insect which has for years almost en- 

 tirely destroyed the onion crop in this vicinity. — 

 We visited Mr. C.'s garden a few days since, and 

 observed two beds of onions side by side, and about 

 two feet apart, one filled with fine large red on- 

 ions, perfectly sound, while the other had but a 



Remarks. — We are much obliged to the Messrs. 

 Hyde for kind attentions. The apples are pre- 

 served for the inspection of the curious. To our 

 eye, there is not a very strong russet resemblance 

 in the apple that approaches that variety. There 

 is a greenish tint pervading it that is never, we 

 think, seen in the true russet. But from some 

 cause there is a remarkable departure from the 

 Baldwin in one of the specimens ; but similar 

 changes are not unfrequent. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 THE HUSBANDMAN. 



Mr. Editor: — In my readings I lately came 

 across the description, as below, of the happy life 

 of a husbandman. It is from Deare's translation 

 of the Georgics of Virgil. It was so pleasing a 

 picture, I transcribed it for my own gratification. 

 Perhaps it may do something towards convincing 

 the farmers of New England of the bliss which 

 they enjoy* compared with other employments and 

 professions. I noticed in the Christian Register 

 of to-day, in a piece written by a clergyman from 

 "PeaccvilZe," the following pleasant thoughts : 



"I always feel a peculiar interest in the conver- 

 sation of an intelligent tiller of the soil ; and when 

 I hear him speak of his various processes of cul- 



