394 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



Now is the time for budding peach trees. Se- 

 vere -winters and the yellows have made terrible 

 havoc with these trees throughout New England. 

 Unless we abandon this delicious fruit entirely, we 

 must set about the gi-owing of trees at once. All 

 who have unbudded seedlings should attend to 

 them now. Every farmer should be able to bud, 

 and graft, and prune trees properly. If the buds 

 are set early, and the ties loosened when it becomes 

 necessary, but not removed, there is less danger 

 from the frosts of winter. Other buds previously 

 set, should now be attended to. 



Composling should not be neglected. The barn- 

 yard, the pig-stye, the cesspool, the privy-vault, 

 should now be liberally supplied with earth, muck, 

 weeds, brakes, and whatever, by decomposition, 

 will add to the value of their contents. 



J)oubts have been expressed by those whose 

 opinions we are wont to regard in other matters, 

 of the value of muck, as a fertilizer. We are 

 among those who have faith in mud,— who would 

 put a muck rake into the hands of every farmer, 

 and who verily believe that much that is valuable, 

 may be raked out of it,— that it has intrinsic 

 value, and moreover is highly valuable as an ab- 

 sorbent and retainer of the volatile ingredients of 

 animal and mineral fertilizers. 



jViiisances, if there are any upon the farm, 

 should now be removed. Partially decayed stumps 

 should be grubbed up, or burnt out. We would 

 apply the stump-puller and make a clean sweep. 

 In cultivated fields and grass grounds, stumps 

 should no more be tolerated than carious teeth in 

 the mouth. Brakes, decaying logs and brush-wood 

 should be removed from pastures and beside fences, 

 by all who would not keep a nursery of brakes and 

 thistles, and other pestilent weeds. 



Bushes and briars which so abound on an un- 

 thrifty farm, should now be removed — extirpated. 

 In this matter we go for radiculture. 



Autumn is the time for draining. Thousands of 

 acres of the best land in New England are now 

 producing nothing but brakes, lizards, foul grasses 

 and miasma, which need nothing but to be relieved 

 of surplus water. That New England is incapable 

 of sustaining her present population, we cannot 

 admit. Indeed, we believe that her soil, under 

 proper management, would produce enough to 

 support four times her present ])opulation. Shall 

 we not do our part towards securing so desirable 

 an object? 



whelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, 

 apting upon the elements of mischief, which perni 

 cious habits have brought together by imperceptible 

 accumulation, may overthrow the edifice of truth 

 and virtue. — Jeremy Bentham. 



Habits. — Like flakes of snow that fall unper- 

 ceived upon the earth, the seeming unimportant 

 events of life succeed one another. As the snow 

 gathers together, so are our habits formed. No sin- 

 gle fiake that is added to the pile produces a sensi- 

 ble change ; no single action creates, however it 

 may exhibit, a man's character; but as the tempest 

 hurls the avalancne down tne mountains, and over- 



For the New England Farmer. 



SWEDISH HORSES. 



Friend Brown : — Please copy the enclosed par- 

 agraph (cut from a paper) which corroborates my 

 statement in relation to hard floors, and is slightly 

 at war with your correspondent at Derby Line : — 



"In Sweden the floors of the stables are planked, 

 and the planks are perforated with holes, so that 

 wet will not lodge on them — the bare boards being 

 the only bedding allowed. To this lodging the 

 Swedes attribute the soundness of their horses' 

 feet, as it is quite uncommon to meet with a lame 

 or foundered horse in Sweden which has been so 

 stabled." 



This practice, no doubt, begins Avith the foal. 

 Hence the enduring soundness of the feet. Here- 

 tofore we have argued the filthy practice in diseas- 

 ing the feet. 



Nothing more need be said upon this point. It 

 appears neither cushions for the feet nor bedding 

 for the body are used in Sweden, but their horses 

 are made hardy by omitting these kind practices. 

 Is it not a mistaken kindness that we deal so large- 

 ly with bedding ? 



A few years since nothing short of a feather bod 

 was tolerated even in mid-summer. Now it is 

 husks, hair, hazle, straw, or the soft side of a pine 

 floor in preference. If you happen to visit a friend 

 to tarry over night, and to take a sweat in advance, 

 just take a peep into the fat, plump leather-bed— or 

 take the reality and plunge in — to dream of warm 

 water rain storms, or of drowning in your own 

 prespiration — and waking unrefrcshed, to find 

 yourself an exhausted mass of vitality. 



The comparison is not inapt, hard beds for man 

 and hard floors for horses, in either case, to pio- 

 mote health. An elm plank floor or oak is cheap- 

 er and better than pine for horse stalls. All deal- 

 ers and raisers of horses may learn a good lesson 

 from the Swedish paragraph. H. Poor. 



Fur the New England Farmer. 



BARBARISM. 



Mr. Editor : — I have thought it might produce 

 a good moral effect upon the public mind, to collect 

 and publish such instances of barbarism as the fol- 

 lowing facts exhibit. I have in this communication 

 collected only a very few cases ; but I hope it may 

 call out from among your intelligent correspondents, 

 others who may be able to lay before your readers 

 additional cases which may serve as a warning to 

 barbarians, of whom not a few disgrace our land. 



Mr. Emerson speaks of a sassafras tree which 

 was "growing in 1842, in West Cambridge, which 

 measured more than three feet through at the base, 

 and rose without a limb, more than thirty feet, with 

 a trunk very straight and slightly diminished, above 

 which it had a somewhat lofty and broad head. It 

 was nearly sixty feet high, and had been long grow- 

 ing by itself. It was felled and its roots dug up, to 

 allow a stone ivall to run in a strai";ht line ! Such 



