FARMERS MISCELLANY. 287 



once more rub up the nap on your imperial saxony coat, I mean 

 your Sunday dress, to see if this can be so ; and I expect you will 

 be rather slow to believe that you have expended a shilling or two 

 more per yard, in consequence of falling in with common opinions 

 without sufficient examination. 1 must not, however, be understood 

 as condemning the fine imperial saxony, for the reason that I am 

 myself too poor to wear one. In truth I have not as yet been able to 

 get above the black bombazet for a sunday coat in summer, and the 

 three-quarter homemade woolen of a london-brown for winter. My 

 native sheep's gray is, however, my favorite cloth, in which I am 

 at home, and do not feel that disposition to stick out my arm at an 

 angle of forty-five degrees when walking ; nor do I fear that I shall 

 split open the back, when I stoop to tie my shoestrings. 



In my perambulations, I have been not a little surprised to see 

 what a great uniformity there is in some sections of the country, 

 both in the general features presented, and in the properties of the 

 soil. Should you accompany me across the hills from Hudson river 

 to Hoosic mountain, you would see that here is a belt which forms 

 truly but one agricultural district, whose predominant character, 

 when products are spoken of, is to produce the grasses and cereals 

 in great perfection. This will be found to be true, whether you cross 

 just above the Highlands, at Albany sixty or seventy miles north, or 

 at Whitehall. You every where find the north and south hills with 

 their gentle slopes, though they are really steepest upon their north- 

 western sides. This is owing to the underlying rock ; and no matter 

 what the rock is — whether a slate, a limestone, or a quartz rock — 

 its inclination is uniform, and the soft materials have nothing to do 

 with the arrangement, further than that they are spread over the 

 rocks whose inclined surfaces were previously determined. 



There is a remarkable fact in regard to the highest grounds of 

 this belt of country, and it is one which I have had more than twenty 

 years experience in testing the truth of : it is that they never suffer 

 extremely from drought. At the present time, when the corn-leaves 

 at Albany and Newburgh are closely rolled up, in Berkshire they 

 are green and bright, and the hills and furrows are bringing forth 

 abundance of fruit. Showers occur here when they are denied every 

 where else, and the consequence is that this region presents its 

 green surface when the valley of the Hudson is parched with drought. 

 / I may be a little more particular in my remarks upon this region, 



