62 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



stock-holders may think for themselves, whether 

 it would not be well for them to let their "repair 

 men" gather some seed, and sow it on the line of 

 their railroads, thus raising their own posts and ties. 

 Farmers, can you not make a saving, by sowing this 

 wherever you wish for a fence on pasture land ? 

 Dejjend on it, your cows will not eat it up. Gard- 

 Kers, have you a garden that needs a northern pro- 

 tection ? Can you raise a cheaper, handsomer, or 

 more durable hedge, than red cedar ? 



A. G. Sheldox. 

 Wilmington, Dec. 24, 1855. 



For tlie New England Farmer. 



TO THE READERS OF "THE FARMER," 



LATE OF AMHERST, NOT DECEASED. 



"We meet again." Shall we go on longer to- 

 gether? So asks the quondam editor and pub- 

 lisher of the Farmer, a journal always upward in its 

 aims, and still aspiring to a higher, broader, more 

 useful life. He must now doff the pruralis excel- 

 lentiae, must no longer say ive, and must gossip a 

 Uttle less freely in the presence of a new and larger 

 circle of .readers ; but may yet rejoice to meet his 

 old readers once more, at least, to tender them the 

 cozy adulations of the season, and to ask them alone, 

 (other readers having full permission to jump this 

 item,) shall we go on together another year ? 



If so, please retain this No., and its successors 

 will follow in course. If otherwise, be so kind as 

 to return it to the office in Boston, and its return 

 shall be deemed a refusal, as politely given as has 

 been the invitation ; only be sure and get enough 

 out of it to ])ay you for the postage out, and leave 

 the publisher to take care of the postage back. 

 The return postage need not be ])repaid. If any of 

 you j)refer the weekly, just say in a brief note to 

 the publisher, with name and post-office distinctly 

 written, "Please send the weekly, instead of the 

 monthly," and your wi.sh will be attended to. If you 

 will take neither, still, a hajjpy new year to you ; 

 go ahead; improve your farming; get a better 

 founial than the JVav England Farmer, if you can, 

 but dont't try to get along without some good ag- 

 ricultural paper — its no saving, but much lost — 

 remember that. 



A few editors, in announcing the present course 

 of the Farmer, have spoken of it as "dead," a slight 

 mistake, but no matter — and some have imputed to 

 J'armcrs, in its vicinity, a lack of interest in its wel- 

 fare. This is a greater mistake, and must be cor- 

 rected. Farmers in the neighborhood have done 

 nobly — 300, 200, 100 and oO subscribers in a town 

 is not to be fiulted. A few remote towns have 

 done the like. But formers at a distance seem 

 generally to have reasoned, that an agricultural 

 paper from some important business centre would 

 answer their purposes lietter. They certainly had 

 a right to choose ; and no inference should be 

 drawn unfavorable to their intelligence or gener- 

 osity. Long since, the farmers of the Connecticut 

 valley had lixed upon Boston, as the place, whence 

 agricultural papers, best adapted to. their wants, 

 should come. It was hard to turn them out of a 

 beaten track, and perhaps the effort should not have 

 been made. Those of them south of the Connecti- 

 cut line have now an excellent paper at Hartford, 

 in their own State, and they will do well to give it 

 a generous support. 



We have quite enough agricultural papers, per- 

 haps too many. As a general thing, they are not 

 well supported. With their limited means, they 

 cannot do all that for the benefit of the farmer, 

 which, with enlarged means, might be done. Type 

 setting, a leading item in the expense of publica- 

 tion, costs no more for ten thousand readers than 

 for one. Hence, the more numerous the readers, 

 the more value can the publisher give for the same 

 money. Fewer agricultural publications, and bet- 

 ter, are the want of the age. We want condensa- 

 tion rather than expansion. The JVew England 

 Farmer has swallowed up the Valley Farmer. 

 The latter has lost its name by the operation ; but 

 no matter ; ladies lose their names, when they get 

 married, but are not always sorry for it. If it 

 should swallow two or three more small papers, and 

 "grow by what it feeds on," it would only hasten 

 the supply of a real want of the farming interest. 

 It need not change its name in consequence of the 

 union, for that is just right as it is ; nor its man- 

 ners, for tliese have always been good ; nor would 

 it be quite modest for the writer to promise, that it 

 shall become more prolific of good things for the 

 farmer. He can only promise to represent the 

 Connecticut valley in it, as well as it can be repre- 

 sented by such sort of timber, and to contribute 

 his mite towards making it what its leading con- 

 ductors are always striving to make it — a sound, 

 truthful, reliable journal, ever conservative, and yet 

 progressive, occasionally whipping up the loitering 

 on the one hand, and often checking the visionary 

 on the other. 



To former readers of the Farmer, who Avill re- 

 ceive the JVew England Farmer in its stead, may 

 it prove a pleasant and useful visitant for the year 

 to come, and as much longer as they see fit to re- 

 ceive it, adding something to their happiness, and 

 something to their wealth, as their reception of it 

 will afford a high gratification to the writer. 



J. A. N. 



For the New England Fanner. 



TRANSIENT BOLT. 



now TO STOP ITS NOISE. 



Passing my neighbor Goodman's yard, to-day, I 

 saw him at work on a wagon, and in a few words 

 he told me how he stops the jingle of the transient 

 bolt on his light four-wheeled vehicles. 



He cuts a ])eice of india rubber fi-om an old fash- 

 ioned shoe, that will just go round the bolt, and 

 then, placing it nicely down hito the hole through 

 the rocker iron and bed-piece, enters the bolt, and 

 has the wagon together again. 



He says the rubber will last a number of years. 

 I have noticed that his vehicles run noiseless, ex- 

 cept the proper squeak of the axles. They get the 

 best of oil, and talk some. w. d. b. 



Concord, JVov. 2Sth, 1855. 



The Old Farmer's Almanack. Established in 

 1793, by Robert B. Thomas. — ^Those who try to 

 keep house in this enlightened age without a copy 

 of this old Jireside companion, must expeot to have 

 their pork shrink in the pot and their beans grow 

 hard by boiling ! The cook must have it, and so 

 must everybody. How could we tell when the sun 

 rises, or the moon, or anybody else, without the Old 



