DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. VIII. 



BOSTON, JANUARY, 1856. 



NO. 1 



JOEL NOURSE, Proprietor, 

 Office.. ..QuiNCY Hall. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) ASSOCIATE 

 HENRY F. FRENCH, J Editoks. 



CALENDAR FOR JANUARY. 



"Season of crackling nuts and pippins pale, 



Of frosted cider and wild popping corn, 



Of cheerful hearths with glowing embers piled, 



Of honest labor in his blessed home. 



********* 



O, Winter though thou bearest on thy brow 

 The tempest-scar and icy touch of death, 

 Still do I love thee, for beyond thee, Hope 

 A brighter world presents to reason's eye. 

 Where the Archangel sings his morning song — 

 The heavenly sky-lark at the gate of day." 



American Seasons, by Jesse E. Dote. 



i ANUARY, with his icy 

 hand, unfolds the 

 ])ortals through 

 which we look, as 

 it were, down the 

 vista, and behold 

 Winter, with its 

 storms of snow and 

 sleet; its snow- 

 banks sparkling in 

 the bright sunlight, or reflec- 

 ting back the chaste glitter 

 of the full orbed moon ; its 

 gaiety and its gloom; its 

 merry sleigh -rides, rushing, 

 with silver bells, over the pol- 

 ished road-way ; its weai-y 

 and worn pedestrian, bufl'et- 

 ing the driving, drifting storm, and 

 seeking a shelter which, perhaps, he 

 shall never find short of another 

 world ; the happy former l)y his win- 

 ter fire, surrounded l)y "wife, children and friends" — 

 all these, in our mind's eye we see, with a hundred 

 other thmgs common to the season of rest, of fes- 

 tivity and mirth. 



Yes, the season of rest — for, like night to the 

 toil-worn man comes winter U^ the toil-worn earth : 

 — faithfully has she labored from April to Novem- 

 ber — "seedtime and harvest'' has she given, and her 

 abundance has been jioiired into the lap of man. 

 Her night of rest has come, and in the glorious 



Springtime, will she arouse herself again, and again 

 pour forth her abundance ; and so shall it ever be, 

 for the Lord said, "While the earth remaineth, seed 

 time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer 

 and winter, and day and night shall not cease." 



And while the earth thus resteth, the husband- 

 man enjoys the fruits of his summer labor. He has 

 something to do, however, besides eating and drmk- 

 ing and making himself men-y, for Winter has her 

 appropriate labors as well as ' summer, and not by 

 any means the least is that of study. In the days 

 of long ago, when the only knowledge possessed by 

 the Farmer was that which he had learned from 

 his father, and when asked why he did thus and so, 

 it was sufficient justification to him to say, because 

 the same was done by my father and my grandflither, 

 no study was necessary. Farming then descended 

 very much as the "good name" so happily expressed 

 in the song, 



"The farm that I now hold * * * 



Was the same that my grandfather tilled. 



He, dying, bequeathed to his son a good name. 



Which unsullied dcj'cended to me. 

 For my son I've preserved it unblemished with shame, 



And it still from a blot shall be free." 



It is very well — excellently well — to have a good 

 name thus descend, but to have an old wooden 

 plow-share, that it would take three yoke of oxen 

 to haul through ordinary tillage land, two men on 

 the beam to keep it in, and a man with a hoe to 

 follow, and turn over the sward, descend from gen- 

 eration to generation, istiot quite so iveU ! We are 

 of those who believe in imj)rovement, and we be- 

 lieve too, that most of the astonishing improvement 

 that has been made in f;\rming, within the past 

 quarter of a century, is due to the improvement in 

 farming utensils — especially in plows, cultivators 

 and seed-planters — and to the many agricultural 

 journals and books, which have sprung up all over 

 Christendom, and we are not certain but among 

 the "rest of mankind," and enabled practical men 

 to hold intercourse with each other, though situated 

 miles and miles asunder. Thanks ! thanks to the 

 mechanics, for their agency in the good work. 



