1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FAEMER. 



373 



py ; yet it is a hard matter to convince the rising 

 generation that agriculture is honorable, when it is 

 represented only by men of but meagre literary 

 and scientific attainments, and possessing a rough 

 and unrefined exterior. For it is an undeniable 

 fact, that a business is respected according to the 

 character of the individuals engaged in its prosecu- 

 tion. EULER NORCROSS. 



South Hadlti), 1856. 



GEN. OLIVER'S ADDRESS. 



In the paragraphs below we give a part of the 

 Address of Gen. H. K. Olhtr, of Lawrence, Mass., 

 before the York County Agricultural Society, in 

 Maine, last autumn. The following is a portrait- 

 ure of The Doubting Farmer. It will touch 

 a good many "under the flank," who, we fear, 

 will rather wince and kick, than "come up to the 

 collar" and mend their ways. 



Now let us take a look at his barn. It is not 

 quite so good for a barn, as the house is for a house, 

 — and yet it should be better. The barn, at any 

 rate, should be the best of its kind, the most con- 

 venient and the most comfortable. But the barn 

 of our practical friend will answer, he thinks, just 

 as well for his cattle, as it did for the cattle of his 

 father, and so, with a nail and a patch, he makes it 

 do. To be sure, it is rather shaky and roughly put 

 together. The shingles have been on twenty-five 

 years, but he guesses they'll stand the sun and snow 

 of another year. The boards, neither clapboarded 

 nor battened, and yielding to the fickle influences 

 of our varying rain and shine, have, for years un- 

 counted, swollen and shrunk, in unequal degree, till 

 at length the emaciating process has made them 

 to shun all actual contact, as if afraid of each other, 

 and yawning seams gape wide, from eaves to under- 

 pinning, and as the knot holes, not "like angels' 

 ■\isits, few and far between," have not retained their 

 sweltered and dried-up knots, there is a "pretty 

 smart chance" that the cattle will be well ventilated 

 summer and winter. To be sure, a book-reading 

 farmer once told him, that the warmer his cattle 

 ■were kept, the less food they will consume, but he 

 don't see why it should be so, and he don't be- 

 lieve it. And so the old barn, shivering with ague- 

 fits, groans and creaks and whistles in the cold blasts 

 of winter. And so shakes the old shed that joins 

 the old barn to the old house, and serves as a shel 

 ter for the old cart and old plow and old harrow, 

 above which, on the old beams, roosts the cold-bc' 

 numbed hens and the old shivering cock, with their 

 frozen combs, keeping all beneath them in a state 

 of unseemly nastiness. * ♦ • * 



In the matter of drainage, he knows nothing 

 and, of course, does nothing. Nor does he keep 

 his grounds well cleared of stumps and stones, and 

 his stone-wall free from brush and weeds. The 

 stumps he thinks will, by and by, rot out, and the 

 stones will be needed to mend the walls which his 

 father put up, and when mending-time comes, he 

 will get hold of them. It would be a waste of 

 time and labor to move them twice, — once to clear 

 the field and once to mend the wall. To be sure, 

 the plow don't go quite so easy nor so deep down 

 where they lie, and sometimes a stoutish rock, or a 

 young boulder among them, gives the plow a hard 

 knock and yanks the cattle's necks with a sudden 



strain, but they don't mind it much, and in fact are 

 used to it, like eels to skinning, and so, on the 

 whole, he will let the stones stay awhile longer. 

 He plows, he plants, he reaps, he mows, he gathers 

 in his crops, as did his fathers before him, except- 

 ing that they are not quite so heavy as they used to 

 be, when he was a boy, and this he thinks is owing 

 to causes beyond his control, such as more rain, or 

 more sun, or more cold, or more heat, or more 

 something, or more nothing, than there used to be 

 in his good old father's time. He puts on manure, 

 fully as much, and of the same kind, and in the 

 same manner, as was done by a long line of "illus- 

 trious predecessors," but somehow or other, not 

 with the same successful results. Something must 

 be the matter, but he cannot tell what. His neigh- 

 bor talks about finding out what the soil may have 

 lost, during the long time it has been under culti- 

 vation, and of restoring the lost elements, and so 

 bringing back the soil to its original strength, but 

 this is all Greek to him, and he don't understand 

 nor believe in Greek. He has never attempted 

 root-crops, though strongly advised so to do, for 

 he thinks the experiment would be of doubtful 

 success, and would require more labor than he is 

 willing to expend, and more hands than he thinks 

 he can afl'ord. 



We wish we could extract more liberally from 

 this excellent address, as it is full of capital hits at 

 the loose ideas that prevail about farming. The 

 writer so mingles wit with wisdom as to make his 

 subject exceedingly attractive while he instructs. 



For the New England Farmer. 



THE FILBERT. 



That the filbert can be successfully cultivated in 

 this latitude, there appears to be no doubt, as two 

 species, the corylus rostrata and americana are 

 found growing wild in abundance. They are known 

 by the name of hazle nut, in this region. There is 

 also a species native in Europe, which is there called 

 hazle nut, and il is said the filbert is but an im- 

 proved variety of it. Our native kinds are both 

 shrubs, but some of the cultivated kinds attain a 

 height of thirty feet. William Cobbett sent a few 

 trees to Dulslin, Pennsylvania, not more than fifty 

 years ago, which were planted, and seventeen years 

 after he states that he saw them when they had at- 

 tained the height of twenty feet, and produced five 

 or six bushels in a year, measured in the husk ; a 

 yield seldom witnessed in England. He earnestly 

 recommends the cultivation of them, and thinks 

 the climate extremely favorable. In Europe, an 

 acre of land will sometimes produce two hundred 

 dollars worth of nuts in a year. In Italy, and 

 Spain, they are cultivated to much extent, and the 

 returns are very profitable. They may be propa- 

 gated by layers or grafting. 



It is desirable that the experiment of cultivating 

 the filbert, should be tried here, as there are vast 

 quantities consumed in the United States ; and as 

 we have almost every variety of soil and climate, the 

 effort must be successful. It would seem that New 

 England is as well adapted to the purpose as any 

 other section, from the circumstance of two species, 

 both perfectly hardy, being found indigenous in 

 many parts of it. O. V. HiLLS. 



JLeoininster, Mass., 1856. 



