TOTHE PUBLIC. 6 



law 1 No ! But although we cannot break any of nature's laws, 

 we may sometimes evade or counteract them. We may spread a 

 curtain over the plant in a garden, or interpose a screen 

 between the sun and the leaves of an herb ; and by this arrange- 

 ment, even although all other conditions necessary to growth are 

 applied, we shall notably interrupt the decomposition requisite to 

 the production of color in the vegetable tissue, and give place to 

 a blanched, etiolated, and imperfect being. But the special mode 

 by which this and all other changes are effected in vegetation are 

 the same every where ; so that whether we wish to produce, or to 

 destroy, the law is at our hand : if we know the effect abroad, we 

 are sure of the same effect at home. It is for these reasons, and 

 in them we find cause for admiration, that the modes and rules of 

 culture which are successful in one place, will be successful in all 

 other places, provided we adapt them to the varying conditions of 

 climate and situation. 



But to return to the subject of American husbandry. We be- 

 lieve it ought to differ from the English system in some of its 

 specific productions. The English cultivator, for instance, impelled 

 by the humidity and comparative coolness of his climate, which 

 favor the growth of the turnip and other root crops, employ these 

 articles very extensively in sustaining and fattening their cattle. 

 Now the American farmer is not driven to the use of these watery 

 products. Our Indian corn, or maize, ought to be the principal 

 food for fattening our domestic animals. The zea mays is the 

 very prince of vegetables : its seeds or kernels furnish, to the live 

 stock which feed on it, an abundance of oil or fat to line the cel- 

 lular tissue, of fibrin to enrich the blood and enlarge and strengthen 

 the muscles, of the phosphate of lime to give solidity to the bones, 

 and indeed of all the elementary principles requisite to the due 

 performance of the functions of nutrition and respiration. A field 

 of maize, with the tall stems of the plants waving in the gentle 

 summer breeze, and spreading their long pointed leaves to the 

 brilliant light of an American sky ; or with the autumnal stalks 



