490 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Not. 



effect that the earth is receding from the sun, as 

 indicited by the fact that the sun's disc grows 

 smaller, and that according to the records of the 

 ancients, it was formerly much larger, we believe 

 four times as large, as at present. If this be true, 

 posterity may see our world only a vast snow- 

 ball. We would fain hope, however, that it is 

 the mistake of some drowzy astronomer, who 

 looked through the wrong end of his telescope. 



Such is the dependence of the planets on each 

 other, and upon the sun, the centre of the sys- 

 tem, that such a variation might be expected to 

 make considerable discord in the ''music of the 

 spheres." It is true, the comets wander about 

 in an erratic and unexpected manner, but our 

 earth is not supposed to have any tail, and can- 

 not, therefore, come under precisely the same 

 head ! So that we think we are authorized in 

 rejecting the idea that we are travelling out of 

 the region of heat and light. In spite of theo- 

 rizers, so far as we have read, no very marvellous 

 change has ever come over men, animals, or cli- 

 mate. 



Races of men and animals have indeed become 

 extinct, but man has always been man, and the 

 earth's zones have always sustained many of their 

 present characteristics. The world is rather a 

 conservative old body, after all, and we would 

 not attribute these variations of weather so much 

 to any radical change in the laws of government, 

 as to some slight causes, which for convenience 

 we might call accidental. 



Having said thus much, we would not under- 

 take to predict what the following month is go- 

 ing to turn out, but for our genial views on the 

 subject see Bryant's perfect little poem. We 

 made a solemn compact, internally, that not one 

 word of it would we quote, because 



"Lives there a man with soul so dead, 

 Who never to himself hath said" 



those lines every fall since they were first writ- 

 ten ? But it's all of no use, so here they are : 



"The melancholy days are come, 



The saddast of the year, 

 Of wailing winds, and naked woods. 



And meadow"< brown and sere. 

 Heaped in the hollow of the grove, 



The withered leaves lie dead ; 

 They rustic to the eddjing gust, 



And to the rabbit's tread." 



"The saddest of the year," — for though life is 

 indeed locked up in those dry branches, and ly- 

 ing at the root of each skeleton tree, we realize 

 it no more than, when we walk through some old 

 churchyard, we realize the resurrection for which 

 the silent forms around us are waiting. Death, 

 and its symbols, is all that meet our eye, but in 

 the one case we have the "sure word of proph- 

 ecy," and in the other, the result of repeated ob- 

 servation. Not one of all these dead leaves at 



our feet is lost, or wasted. They will all re-ap- 

 pear again, by-and-bye, in another and more beau- 

 tiful form. 



Let us leave the world to its winter sleep, then, 

 cheerfully, for although our summer and harvest 

 were short, do not our barns and our store-rooms 

 testify that they did not come in vain ? It is, 

 very appropriately, at this season that our Yan- 

 kee Thanksgiving is appointed — an observance 

 which is spreading year by year, throughout the 

 United States — for as the children of New Eng- 

 land migrate to different parts of the Union, they 

 must needs carry the customs of their forefathers 

 with them. It is now more than two hundred 

 years since the first Thanksgiving was instituted 

 here. 



Some of us may have forgotten the incidents 

 which produced it, although we learned at school 

 in our histories, how there was a famine in the 

 land, and a time was set apart as a day of fast- 

 ing and prayer. But a ship laden with provi- 

 sions came to them from the "old country," and 

 this day of fasting, was changed to one of 

 Thanksgiving. 



As we, the happy families of New England, 

 gather around our Thanksgiving tables, then 

 here's to the memory of our Puritan ancestors 1 



To Cure Hard Pulling Horses. — Put the 

 curb chain inside the mouth, from hook to hook, 

 instead of out. How or why it acts with such 

 con-ideralile effect, I know not; but at times, it 

 utterly puts an end to over-pulling. To stop a 

 runaway horse, or render the most pulling brute 

 quiet and playful with his bit, get a double snaf- 

 fle, rather thick and heavy, the joints rather open ; 

 cut an old curb chain in half, and hit it hang down 

 from the bottom snaffle joint. When the brute 

 offers to pull or bolt, instantly merely drop your 

 hand ; of course, the curb chain will drop between 

 his front teeth ; and should th« beast savage it, 

 [if any of your correspondents wish to try the ef- 

 fect on themselves, they have only to place a nut 

 between their front teeth and try to crack it, 

 they will soon understand the vast difference be- 

 tween pleasure and pain.] So does the horse ; 

 and in a very short time, he will play with the 

 very thing he before tried to savage ; and in the 

 end, becoiTie, from a vicious brute, a playful and 

 good mouthed animal. — London Field. 



Agricultur.\l Exhibitions for 1859. — 

 There have b^en held during the month of Sep- 

 tember, one hundred and ninety-seven State and 

 County Fairs ; and there are one hundred and 

 twenty to take place during the months of Octo- 

 ber and November. — Practical Machinist. 



Quite a Farm. — The whole amount of the 

 public land surveys, as returned to the General 

 Land Office, for the year ending with the last 

 month, is nearly 53,000 miles, or about fifteen 

 million acres, nearly equal to the wbole extent 

 of New England. 



