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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Dec. 



THE NOSTH AMERICAN BEVIEW AND 

 AGRICULTURE. | 



We deem it a good sign of the times, that the 

 leading literary publication of the country in its 

 October number gives to the world an able arti- 

 cle upon "Educated Labor." 



The treatise of our associate, Judge French, 

 upon "Farm Drainage," is made the principal 

 text upon which the writer has based an elabo- 

 rate article of twenty-five pages, which we should 

 be glad to copy into our columns, could we find 

 pace. 



We recognize in the finished and classical style 

 of this article, and in its bold and vigorous 

 tone, the well trained mind of an old correspond- 

 ent of the Farmer, formerly of New Hampshire, 

 but now known, and hereafter, we doubt not, to 

 he more and more distinguished, as Chancellor of 

 the Washington University at St. Louis. 



When such men as Chancellor Hoyt, of St. 

 Louis, and Dr. Peabody, the learned editor of 

 the North American, come before the public as 

 the advocates of the interests of agriculture, we 

 may well rejoice in the assurance that our cause 

 will have, at least, a fair hearing before the world. 

 In no way can we so well indicate the general 

 drift of the writer of this article, as by a few ex- 

 tracts. See how "like apples of gold in pictures 

 of silver" are his "words fitly spoken :" 



"A nation is strong only when, like the fabled 

 Libyan giant, it rests its feet upon the solid 

 earth. Land is the basis of our power ; the ev- 

 erlasting hills are the pillars of our imperial sov- 

 ereignty. Men, in successive generations, may 

 give themselves up in mad frenzy to slaughter 

 and extermination ; dynasties may follow dynas- 

 ties in lengthening cycles of misrule and oppres- 

 sion ; the refluent wave of barbarism may dash 

 against the broken arches of a former civiliza- 

 tion ; palaces, temples, capitols, all the trophies 

 et art, may pass away in the ages like the ephem- 

 era of a summer morning ; but Nature is eternal, 

 and the husbandman is her minister, and should 

 be her interpreter." 



Land drainage is the principal topic of discus- 

 sion throughout the article, and the recent work 

 of Judge French comes in for the following no- 

 tice: 



"Every book which sheds new light upon the 

 principles and processes of agriculture in any of 

 its departments, we welcome as a contribution to 

 the public welfare. Such is the work whose ti- 

 tle we have placed first at the head of this arti- 

 cle. Elaborate in its explanation of methods, 

 and lucid in its philosopical statements, it leaves 

 little to be said by others on altogether the most 

 important branch of American husbandry. It is 

 tastefully printed and illustrated ; and, if read at 

 every farmer's fireside morning and evening with 

 'judicious care,' it would soon renovate the face 

 of the country, clothing the exhausted fields at 

 the East with fresh verdure, and turning the 

 ocean-like prairies of the West, now to a large 



extent too wet for tillage or for health, into the 

 very garden of the world. The author is one of 

 those versatile, open-eyed men, whose constant 

 and careful observation of minute and discon- 

 nected facts is happily accompanied by a rare 

 power of analysis and generalization. He pre- 

 sents a pleasant combination of scholarly culture 

 and practical energy, and is equally at home at 

 the forum and in the field, discharging with sin- 

 gular tact the two-fold function of an accom- 

 plished jurist and a skilful tiller of the soil. He 

 seems to receive from frequent contact with the 

 earth fresh vigor for wrestling with hard ques- 

 tions of law. For many years associate editor of 

 the A'*e?y England Farmer, and special contrib- 

 utor to other similar journals, he has devoted 

 the leisure wrung from a laborious profession to 

 the study and practice of agriculture. His arti- 

 cles and addresses are not the mere speculations 

 of a white-handed theorist, but they all have the 

 flavor of fresh-plowed fields and new-mown hay. 

 As a racy and instructive writer upon the vari- 

 ous topics connected with the garden, the orch- 

 ard and the farm, he has no superior and few 

 equals in this country. He has the faculty of 

 making all his resources, of whatever nature, con- 

 tribute to the illustration of the particular sub- 

 ject in hand, no matter what that subject may 

 be. The necessity of 'gratings at the outlet of 

 drains,' in order to keep out all sorts of vermin, 

 is not a very promising topic for pleasant rhet- 

 oric, and yet the pages occupied by him in its 

 discussion sparkle with flashes from Virgil and 

 Shakspeare, Coleridge and Matthew Prior." 



" 'There are,' he says, 'many species of vermin, 

 both creeping things and 'slimy ihings that crawl 

 with legs,' which seem to imagine that drains are 

 constructed for their especial accommodation. In 

 dry times it is a favorite amusement of moles, 

 and mice and snakes, to explore the devious pas- 

 sages thus fitted up for them ; and entering the 

 capacious, open front door, they never suspect 

 that the spacious corridors lead to no apart- 

 ments, that their accommodations, as they pro- 

 gress, grow 'fine by degrees and beautifully less,' 

 and that these are houses with no back doors, 

 or even convenient places for turning about for 

 a retreat. Unlike the road to Hades, the de- 

 scent to which is easy, here the ascent is inviting ; 

 though, alike in both cases, 'Bevocare gradum, 

 hoc opus, hic labor est.' They persevere upward 

 and onward, till they come, in more senses than 

 one, to an 'untimely end.' Perhaps, stuck fast 

 in a small pipe tile, they die a nightmare death ; 

 or perhaps, overtaken by a shower, of the effect 

 of which, in their ignorance of the scientific 

 principles of drainage, they had no conception, 

 they are drowned before they have time for de- 

 liverance from the strait in which they find them- 

 selves, and so are left, as the poet strikingly ex- 

 presses it, 'to lie in cold obstruction, and to rot.' 

 In cold weather, water from the drains is warmer 

 than the open ditch, and the poor frogs, reluc- 

 tant to submit to the law of nature, which re- 

 quires them to seek refuge in mud and oblivii/US 

 sleep in winter, gather round the outfalb, as 

 they do about springs, to bask in the warmth of 

 the running water. If the flow is small, they 

 leap up into the pipe, and follow its course up- 

 ward. In summer, the drains furnish for them a 

 cool and shady retreat from the mid-day sun, and,. 



