1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



379 



ings are increased in the present case, when we re 

 member that he has been called from the field of 

 his usefulness when the great work of his most 

 useful life has been but partly done. But he has 

 been taken, and we may not murmur at the inscru- 

 table decree by which that work has been arrested, 

 just as it was on the eve of completion. New 

 England may have more brilliant and more popu- 

 lar illustrators of her natural science, but one more 

 thorough, or more devoted, we have never known ; 

 nor one who once known, has been more honored 

 and esteemed by naturalists, or beloved by friends, 

 than the late Professor Zadock Thompson." 

 **«♦♦*♦* 



After these elegant and deserved tributes, [a 

 portion omitted. — Ed.] little remains for our jjartial 

 pen to add. We have known him well since 1834, 

 in his various relations, as a teacher, as a clergy- 

 man, as a professor, as a correspondent and a friend. 

 During the quarter of a century that he devoted 

 himself to the instruction of youth, to the labors of 

 authorship and to scientific research, he exhibited 

 himself as an unselfish, and unambitious man. He 

 loved hi", pu])ils, his friends, his church, his associ- 

 ates, his State, his town, and above all, his home. 

 As a teacher, he was kind and thorough ; as a cler- 

 gyman, what has been appropriately called his 

 "deep and unconquerable modesty of spirit" pre- 

 vented his ever rising above the Diaconate in the 

 Protestant E])iscopal church. 



As an author, he has won high distinction for 

 the profundity of his research, and wonderful accu- 

 racy of date and detail has characterized all of his 

 historical ])roductions. His astronomical and me- 

 teorological observations were carefully made and 

 noted, and he vvas one of the best and most reliable 

 correspondents of the Smithsonian Institution. 



As ins life has been chiefly spent in the develop- 

 ment and illustration of the natural productions of 

 his native State, the .scientific world, and esj^ecial- 

 ly Vermonters, will cherish his memory as that of a 

 man who devoted his life with energy and single- 

 ness of purpose to objects of lasting interest and 

 usefulness to the W'hole community. 



Let the memory of such men be kept in perpetual 

 bloom! SuUM CuiQUE. 



St. Albans, Vt. 



A WIFE'S INFLUENCE. 



A woman, in many instances, has her husband's 

 fortune in her power, because she may or may not 

 conform to his circumstances. This is her first du- 

 ty, and it ought to be her pride. No passion for 

 luxury or display ought to tempt her for a mo- 

 ment to deviate in the least degree from this line 

 of conduct. She will find her respectability in it. 

 Any other course is wretchedness itself, and inevi- 

 tably leads to ruin. 



Nothing can be more miserable than to keep up 

 appearances. If it could succeed, it would cost 

 more than it is worth ; as it neyer can, its failure 

 involves the deepest mortification. Some of the 

 sublimest exhibitions of human virtue hive been 

 made by women who have been precipitated sud- 

 denly from wealth and splendor to absolute want. 



Then a man's fortunes are in the hands of his 

 wife, inasmuch as his own power of exertion de- 

 pends on her. His moral strength is inconceivably 

 increased by her sympathy, her counsel, her aid. 

 She can aid him immensely, by relieving him of 



everything which she is capable of taking upon 

 herself. His own employments are usually such as 

 to require his whole time and his whole mind. 



A good wife will never suffer her husband's at- 

 tention to be distracted hy details to which her own 

 time and talents are adequate. If she be prompt- 

 ed by true affection and good sense, she will per- 

 ceive that when his spirits are borne down and 

 overwhelmed, she, of all human beings, can minis- 

 ter to its needs. For the sick soul her nursing is 

 quite as sovereign as it is for corporeal ills. If it be 

 weary, in her assiduity it finds repose and refresh- 

 ment. If it be harassed and worn to a morbid irri- 

 tability, her gentle tones steal over it with a sooth- 

 ing more potent than the most exquisite music. If 

 every enterprise be dead, her patience and forti- 

 tude have the power to rekindle them in the heart, 

 and he again goes forth to renew the encounter 

 with the toils and troubles of life. — Life Illustra- 

 ted. 



MASSACHUSETTS TRANSACTIONS. 



ECONOMY. 



We have already acknowledged the reception of 

 the Third Annual Report of the Secretary of the 

 Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, and have no- 

 ticed very briefly some of the contents of this 

 Hand-book of Agriculture in our Commonwealth. 

 And now as we lay down the volume after another 

 partial examination of its contents, and with a fresh 

 admiration for the excellency of its arrangement, 

 we feel impelled to write a lecture on Economy! 

 We hardly know how the perusal of this volume 

 has suggested this topic. It may have been an in- 

 distinct view of the labor and expense which the 

 book itself m.ust have cost, freighted as it is with 

 so much information upon the details and results 

 of the labor expended upon the soil in all parts of 

 the State, from the cranberry meadows of the Cape- 

 cod ders, to the sweet-scented buttries among the 

 hills of Berkshire. It may have been a twinge of 

 the purse, as we read with so much interest the 

 dissertation of the Secretary upon farm imple- 

 ments, and examined with so much curiosity the 

 many cuts with which his subject is illustrated ; or, 

 the remark of the Norfolk County Committee on 

 the same subject, that, "There seems to be a prin- 

 ciple at work which requires that, in proportion as 

 the fruits of the earth are aided in their produc- 

 tion by beautiful and superior implements, the more 

 costly they shall become." * * » * "What is the 

 peculiar blessings of improvements so greatly ex- 

 tolled, if the result of their introduction is chiefly 

 seen in the enhancement of the price of the nec- 

 essaries of life, to such an extreme as to drive 

 people from the homes of their childhood to a coun- 

 try where the boasted civilization of our sections 

 have but just commenced to dawn?" Perhaps our 

 mind was directed to the subject of economy by 

 the several reports on Domestic Manufactures; 

 for the chairman of the Hampshire, Franklin and 

 Hampden Committee says, the times have so 



