54 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



AUGUST 28, 1S33. 



»> *tfcV ENGLAND FARMER. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUG. 28, 1833. 



FUUIT stku.im:. 



The following is an abstract of the Statute of 

 this Commonwealth passed in 1S18 for the pre- 

 vention of trespasses in Orchards and Gardens, &e. 



Sec. 1. If any person enter upon any grass land, 

 orchard, or garden, without permission, with intent to 

 cnt, destroy, take or carry away any grass, hay, fruit or 

 vegetables, with intent to injure or defraud the owner : 

 such person shall, on conviction before a justice of the 

 peace, forfeit and pajMbr every such offence, a sum not 

 less than two, nor more than ten dollars ; and be also 

 liable in damages to the party injured. 



Sec. 2. If any person, having entered as aforesaid, 

 shall take without permission, and with intent to injure 

 and defraud the owner, any grass, hay, fruit, vegetable 

 or shrub, cultivated for ornament or use ; such person 

 shall, on conviction, by indictment or information before 

 any court of Common Pleas, forfeit and pay a sum not 

 less than five, nor more than fifty dollars, for each of- 

 fence, and be farther liable to the party injured, in dam- 

 ages, equal to three times the value of the grass, hay, 

 fruit, vegetables, or shrubs carried away. 



Sec. 3. If any person, having entered as aforesaid, 

 shall, without permission of the owner, and with intent 

 to injure him, break, bruise, cut, mutilate, injure or de- 

 stroy any fruit-tree, tree for ornament or shade, or shrub 

 cultivated for ornament or use, such person on convic- 

 tion, as in Sec. 2, shall forfeit and pay a sum not less 

 than ten, nor more than one hundred dollars. 



Sec 4. If any person shall commit any of the above 

 trespasses on the Lord's day, or in the night time, (that 

 '&, between sun setting and sun rising,) he shall be liable 

 to pay double the above penalties. And all prosecutions 

 for breaches of this act shall be commenced within one 

 year from the time the offence shall be committed, or 

 the penalties shall have accrued, and not afterwards. 



Though such is the law of the land, custom 

 sanctions, or at least connives at its violation ; and 

 iii too man}' instances it may he considere I as a 

 uiere dead letter. Many boys and young men, 

 "children of a larger growth," who would shrink 

 from, and hold in abhorrence any other kind of 

 theft, appear to consider " water-melon frolics," or 

 nocturnal depredations on their neighbor's orchards 

 rather as indications of manhood, spirit and enter- 

 prise, than as serious offences against the laws of 

 the land, the diclutes of morality, or the require- 

 ments of religion. 



Such, however, is not the case among the more 

 enlightened nations of Europe. In England man 

 traps and spring guns cause the paltry trespassers 

 on orchards or fruit gardens to pay with their 

 limbs or lives the forfeit of their offences. In 

 France and most of the more civilzed nations on 

 the continent, public opinion is sufficient guaranty 

 against any trespasses or pillage which would in- 

 jure, deface or wrongfully appropriate the fruits 

 or flowers of public or private gardens. Touch 

 not. taste not, handle not, without leave of the 

 owner, is the law of the land, which the meanest 

 and most unprincipled beggar or thief, would es- 

 teem it sacrilege to violate. 



What can be more annoying than the situation 

 in which evil doers of this description not uufre- 

 quently place the cultivators of fruit. A man by 

 dint of much labor and expense has obtained what 

 he hopes and believes will prove a new and valua- 

 ble kind of apple or pear, or some other sort of 

 fruit. He has planted it, and watered it, and ma- 

 nured it, and bestowed upon it all the care belong- 

 ing to an almost filial affection, waiting for it to 

 show fruit, that he may ascertain the value of the 

 variety, and judge whether it is advisable to propa- 

 gate from it. But just before its product arrives 



it that degree of maturity, which may enable him 

 to form a correct estimate of its value, along comes 

 a brainless, heartless biped, and steals the fruit, 

 which could alone indicate the value of the tree 

 on which it grew, ami forces the disconsolate own- 

 er to wait another year, before he ran know 

 whether his favorite is worth its weight in gold or 

 a mere cumberer of the ground! Nor is this all. 

 The owner of valuable fruit trees, finding he has 

 no security for that kind of property, relinquishes 

 their cultivation in despair, and the public is thus 

 injured beyond calculation by the trespasser, who 

 for the sake of two or three green apples or half 

 ripe pears, does more injury to the community, 

 than many a perpetrator of crimes, which doom 

 the offender for life to the State Prison. 



(JJ^ Our Subscribers hi Canada and New Bruns- 

 ivick. We are now thrown into a quandary re- 

 specting Subscribers for the New England Farmer 

 out of the States. Our Postmaster General's in- 

 structions now are to pay postage of papers before 

 they cross the lines ; this will make the following 

 arrangement necessary. Subscribers in the Cana- 

 das and New Brunswick, will please remit the 

 amount of their bills enclosed this week to this 

 office, or to the following gentlemen. 



Quebec, (L. C.) Messrs. Neilson & Cowan. 



Montreal, (L. C.) Geo. Bent, Druggist. 



St. John, (N. B.) Win, O. Smith, do. 



We have taken some liberty here which we 

 hope will he excused, and a compliance will ena- 

 ble us to continue the paper. The postage for a 

 weekly paper is 80 cents a year to the lines, so 

 that this amount will be added to the bills, and it 

 is earnestly requested that all our subscribers upon 

 the reception of this notice intimate to us or our 

 agents their wish as to the future. 



Those who owe for years past will recollect 

 their hills will be at $3 per year, and for vol. xii. 

 $2.50 in advance. Such persons will please remit 

 $6 to this office, which will cover the postage. If 

 our subscribers in New Brunswick prefer we should 

 send their papers to St. John by packet, they will 

 please retain the amount of their postage. ■ 



We would improve this time to return our sin- 

 cere thanks to gentlemen of the Provinces who 

 have so liberally patronised our unworthy hebdo- 

 madal, and to such as will continue it wc will feel 

 particularly obliged. 



ITEMS OF INTELLIGENCE. 



A disease prevails among horses and neat cattle, in 

 the county of Philadelphia, which destroys them very 

 suddenly. A letter says — " My cows and horses were 

 apparently in health three hours previous to death, and 

 in every instance they were found dead without exhibit- 

 ing any symptoms of disease. I am told, however, that 

 a horse of one of my neighbors exhibited uneasiness and 

 a kind of vertigo, a few hours previous to death, but tliat 

 no symptoms of disease were visible in the morning — 

 the animal having died in the evening." 



Anti-Tobacco Society. Last Wednesday evening a 

 meeting was holden at the First Parish meeting-house, 

 for the purpose of forming a society to discourage the 

 use of tobacco. On this occasion, a dissertation on the 

 character and the effects of tobacco upon the animal 

 system, was delivered by Dr. Rufus Longley ; and a lec- 

 ture was also delivered by the Rev. Mr. Perry, on the 

 physical and moral evil arising from the use of this 

 weed. Being absent from town, we were deprived of 

 the pleasure of listening to the dissertation of Dr. Long- 

 ley, and of a considerable portion of Mr. Perry's lecture 



These performances are both highly extolled by those 

 who were present, and on whose taste and judgment 

 we rely. Certain it is, that so much of the lecture as 

 we heard, was highly meritorious. For want of time, 

 Mr. Perry was obliged to postpone the delivery of a por- 

 tion of bis lecture until another meeting. A constitu- 

 tion was read and signed by twenty-six persons, and the 

 meeting was adjourned to next Thursday evening, when 

 it is understood that Mr. Perry will conclude his lecture 

 — and when the officers of the society will be chosen. 

 Thanks were voted to the lecturers, and copies of their 

 performances solicited for publication. — Hurerhill Gaz. 



New England Convention. In consequence of the po- 

 litical Conventional Worcester, on the same day appoint- 

 ed for the N. E. Convention, the Executive Committee 

 have resohed to postpone the meeting which was ap- 

 pointed on the 4th Sept. to the 2d day of Oct. next. 



It canno: be too often repeated, that the business which 

 is contemplated by the N. E. Convention, is so general 

 in its natire, as to exclude no sect, or party. — The Jack- 

 son and Anti-Jackson — the Tariff and anti-tariff — the 

 mason ind anti-mason — the orthodox and heterodox, 

 may all meet, and unite their labors for the physical and 

 moral rood of society, without injury to any honest pur- 

 pose, of any party. Our object is to correct wrong im- 

 pressions and deceptive laws, which work inequality, to 

 the great injury of the working classes. — Boston Artisan. 



Mr. Brooks, Editor of the Portland Advertiser, in his 

 letter concerning the prospers of New Orleans, does 

 not stale, in giving the mileage to the principal rivers 

 which po«r their treasures into New Orleans, the extent 

 to which the Missouri is navigated by steam. This we 

 leem o. some importance, inasmuch as there is not, in 

 general, an accurate knowledge on this subject. The 

 American Fur Company have sent their steamboats, 

 twenty-one hundred miles above the mouth of die Mis- 

 souri ' and in hi<di water, steamboats of light draft can 

 ascmd two thousand six hundred miles. The Mississip- 

 pi ii navigable by steam between six and seven hundred 

 milis above St. Louis. These rivers pass through an 

 exctedingly fertile country ; and when a just system of 

 Inhrnal Improvement shall be carried into operation, not 

 onh New Orleans and the great valley of the Mississip- 

 pi vill be benefitted, but every portion of the United 

 States will feel the invigorating influence of such acourse. 



Two thousand six hundred miles! What a world 

 there is in our own country of which we know little or 

 nothing ! There, is land enough for all England and 

 France to live and be happy in. — St. Louis Times. 



A Grand Railroad Spectack. The locomotive engine, 

 on the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad came in on 

 Sunday evening, a little before seven o'clock, with four- 

 teen cars in its train ; averaging, as nearly as we could 

 judge, thirty persons to each car— making a total of 420. 

 These persons were mostly those who had been to the 

 Camp Meeting near Reister-town,and were on their re- 

 turn. The sight was truly grand ! The movement of 

 the long train, as it were by magic, at an easy speed, at 

 the rate of about sixteen miles to the hour, around the 

 spurs of hills, following the serpentine course of the 

 wild and tumbling stream, the banks and rocks of which 

 in the vicinity of every settlement were enlivened by 

 spectators— the younger with smiling faces, and the old- 

 er with a kind of wonder and astonishment, at the re- 

 flection, no doubt, at the change which two or three 

 years, with industry and enterprise, had effected in their 

 rocky and woody neighborhood. The salubrity of the 

 atmosphere was beyond all comparison— and the pleas- 

 antness of the day— the mild refreshing breezes— and 

 the quiet and orderly conduct of every passenger— ren- 

 dered the scene, and every thing relative to it, most tru- 

 ly delightful.— Marylander. 



