362 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Aug. 



one time myriads of sea-fowl were almost sole oc- 

 pants. 



It is perhaps worth while to mention the case of 

 Mr. Mactier, as an instance of the extent to which, 

 and of the faith with which, capital is sometimes 

 embarked in farming in Great Britain. He is an 

 enterprising Englishman, who, having realized a 

 fortune in the East Indies, purchased a property 

 of 22,000 acres of the Duke of Gordon, in Aber- 

 deenshire, which was almost entirely in a state of 

 nature. The price ])aid was nearly $600,000, and 

 he is laying out $125 the acre, or five times its 

 original cost, in improvements of all sorts. These 

 operations consist, principally, of subsoil plowing. 

 The property being covered with granite rocks, 

 these are blasted and removed. The ground, after 

 being thus cleared, is levelled, drained and limed, 

 and laid out in farms of about 400 acres each. 

 These farms, it is stated, are let for nineteen years, 

 at the rate of five per cent, on the money expend- 

 ed upon them. Tliis is the scale upon which agri- 

 cultural undertakings are sometimes conducted in 

 Great Britain ; for the whole operation, when com- 

 pleted, will absorb between three and four millions 

 of dollars. 



The Scotch farmers, with more intelligence than 

 any others of the same class, are careful to under- 

 take only what they can do well. In that country, 

 not only are they not ambitious to become propri- 

 etors when they have only capital sufficient to be 

 farmers, but they take care not to rent a hundred 

 acres when they have only capital sufficient to work 

 fifty. They have the sense to live, rather below, 

 than above their income, and do not mind putting 

 their hand to the plow. They prefer in everything 

 realities. False pride has disappeared before the 

 natural good sense of the Scotch. Some in this 

 country might learn a useful lesson by visiting 

 them. 



The Highlands, once the land of Clans and High 

 landers and warriors, now of romance and poetical 

 associations in the minds of thousands, who know 

 them only through the pages of Scott, are desolate 

 regions, almost destitute of trees, and with scarcely 

 even heather; everywhere steep and naked rocks, 

 streams of water of all sizes, lakes, falls, foaming 

 torrents, immense mosses, perpetual snows, and 

 rain, and violent winds from the North Sea. It 

 seems as if rural economy could have nothing to 

 do with such a country. The old inhabitants, the 

 clansmen and warriors and their descendants, are 

 gone from the land, forced away by means, which 

 none but a nation, rough-mannered like the Brit- 

 ish people, could have used ; and it is now the land 

 of silence and of sheep. It seems as if there were no 

 human inhabitants in it. If the bagpipe is heard, 

 it is the peaceful amusement of a shepherd, who 

 tends five hundred sheep for wages, and knows not 

 the history of the clans, but whether it has been a 

 good lambing season, and how wool is selling. 

 There are immense forests planted by noblemen, 

 and shooting grounds, and fisheries ; but sheep, and 

 desolation, and silence, rocks, crags, waterfalls, and 

 heather, romantic views, and romantic associations 

 with the past — these things, and not agriculture, 

 engage the thoughts of a visiter to the Highlands. 



M. 



The "Women of Peru. — Of all the Spanish cus- 

 toms of the olden time, devotion to women is pre- 

 served in perfect purity only in Peru. The loving 



husband, with his ardent, poetic imagination, de- 

 lights in being the slave of his lady. The fair se- 

 noras make the largest demands on gallantry, and 

 the slightest lack of watchfulness often excites re- 

 sentment which will not be appeased. In company 

 a gentleman approaches a woman only when he 

 can shoAV her some Httle attention. Above all, her 

 right is su])reme to the first places and the strong- 

 est expressions of devotion. People do not say 

 here as elsewhere, "I have the honor to present my 

 compliments to you," or, "How do you do ?" but, 

 "Senora, I kiss your feet." 



"Proposing," in Peru, is very romantic. The 

 suitor appears on the appointed evening with a gai- 

 ly-dressed troubador under the balcony of his be- 

 loved ; the singer steps before her flower-bedecked 

 window, and sings her beauties in the name of the 

 lover. He compares her size to that of a palm-tree, 

 her lips to two blushing rose-buds, and her wo- 

 manly foi-m to that of the dove. With assumed 

 harshness the lady asks the lover : "Who are you, 

 and what do you want ?" He answers with ardent 

 confidence : "Thee do I adore ; the stars live in 

 the harmony of love, and why should not we, too, 

 love each other ?" Then the proud beauty gives 

 herself away; she takes her flower wreath from her 

 hair and throws it do\vn to her lover, promising to 

 to be his own forever. 



For the Neto England Farmer, 



THE COLT GUESTION. 



Mr. Editor : — In the June number of the Far- 

 mer I noticed an article from the pen of H. Poor, 

 Esq., of Brooklyn, N. Y., a gentleman reported to 

 be a good breeder of horses, in which he says he 

 takes "strong grounds" against my treatment of 

 colts. 



The importance of the subject in hand leads 

 me to solicit another cornerof your valuable paper, 

 to set the gentleman right, as I perceive that I 

 have been entirely misunderstood in my former 

 communication, and consequently his reasonings on 

 the subject are all drawn from false premises. 



I do saij that I never allow a colt to stand upon 

 a floor before he is two years old, as I believe the 

 practice to be prejudicial to the formation of good 

 feet, and I also agree with the gentleman, that if 

 my plan had been to keep my colts upon a plank 

 floor without cleaning from "December till plant- 

 ing time," I should expect that nine in ten thus 

 trained would either die, or become unsound before 

 they were two years old. The gentleman assumes 

 (tacitly) that there are but two plans of stabling 

 colts. The first is his, of keeping them upon a hard 

 clean floor. The second, is my plan, of keeping 

 them upon a large amount of manure in a heating 

 state. While I maintain, and am prepared to show, 

 that the first of these plans is bad, the second 

 worse, while another, which is in fact my method, 

 is safe and infinitely the best of all, and I also "speak 

 from experience, as many of your readers know," 

 though I must confess that I have never experi- 

 enced the loss of a horse by allowing him "to stand 

 month after month in his own filth," having been 

 warned against the practice more than 40 years ago. 

 With regard to the keeping of colts upon a clean 

 hard floor I shall only say that the practice is con- 

 demned by the best horse breeders in Vermont, and 

 from personal experience and observation in these 



