398 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



JTKE IS, 1*3*. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



BOSTON. WEDNESDAY EVENING, JUNE 18, 1831. 

 HEALTH AND CLEANLINESS. 



Farmer's If'ork. I5e so good ai to see that every 

 deposit of unhealthy and contagions matter in, upon 

 and al)out your premises is removed, or so disposed 

 of as to become food for your plants instead of the 

 cause of disease to yourself or family. Life with- 

 out health is scarcely to be desired. Indeed, the 

 valetudinarian rather lingers than lives — his exist- 

 ence is a burthen to himself, and an annoyance to 

 his friends. The chief requisites for hcallh are 

 exercise, tranquility of mind, srood air, wholesome 

 diet, good water and temperance in all things. If 

 the forehanded fanner is not provided with nil 

 these, it is usually his own fault. Some drones, 

 however, who undertake to live by farming, but 

 are most likely to die by indolence, carelessness 

 and inattention to their own important interests, 

 contrive to provide for themselves and families an 

 atmosphere, which would "all but" poison a crow 

 or a toad, much more a human being: 



''■ Thus, as the ancient poets learn us, 

 The crows, which flew o'er lake Avernus, 

 Were so bestenched in one half minute 

 They giddy grew and tumbled in it." 



If it is indelicate and unwholesome to take into 

 the stomach water or food, poisoned with putres- 

 cence, what is it to take into the lungs the gases 

 generated hy putrefaction ? Yet some farmers' 

 barn yards, cellars, hog-pens, back houses, &c. 

 are suffered to remain, during the summer months 

 in such a stato that, if they do not generate cholera 

 or typhus fever, in their worst forms, which we 

 fear is too frequently the case, they at least cause 

 a degree of languor and debility, which embitters 

 existence, and in a great measure disqualifies for 

 any of the useful purposes of life. 



" Ah ! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, 

 When drooping health and spints go amiss, 

 How tasteless then whatever can be given, 

 Health is the vital principle of bliss." 



The unheallliiness of the exhalations to which 

 we allude is not the only argument against suffer- 

 ing them to go at large to poison as well as to 

 "manure the atmosphere." It is a fact that the 

 vapor or gases which emanate from decomposing 

 atitiual and vegetable substances, which are so in- 

 jurious to health in animals, are food for plants, 

 'i'he substances which offend the senses and injure 

 rhe constitution of the farmer and his family, if 

 arrested and properly appropriated by the hand of 

 sVilful industry, "may bo so modified in the great 

 laboratory of nature as to greet us in the fra- 

 grance of the flower, regale us in the plum or nec- 

 tarine, or furnish the stamina of life in substantial 

 viands from the garden, the field, and the stall of 

 the cultivator." 



But how is the desirable object of converting 

 poison for animals into food for vegetables to be 

 effected ? We cannot better answer this important 

 inquiry than by quoting a passage from " Letters 

 of Jlgricola" attributed to John Young, Esq. of 

 Nora Scotia : 



" Earth is a powerful absorber of all the gases, 

 which arise from putrefaction. The earth pos- 

 sesses not only the property of retaining the putrid 

 steams, which are formed from the dung of de- 

 composing bodies within itself, but also of attract- 

 ing the effluvia when floating in the air. The sa- 

 lubrity of a country depends on the latter quality ; 

 as the practice of burying the dung in the earth is 



founded on the former. The stench proceeding 

 from the dissolution of organized matter never 

 rises through the ground to assail the nostrils, al- 

 though it is sufficiently offensive from bodies cor- 

 rupting in air and water. A strongly dunged field, 

 after being ploughed, sown and harrowed, sends 

 forth a healthful and refreshing smell — a proof that 

 all the putrid vapors, which otherwise would an- 

 noy us, are absorbed and retained for the nutrition 

 of the crop. It is on this account that the poorest 

 earth can be enriched to n very high degree by 

 mere exposure to the gases of putrefaction. Put 

 a layer of common soil along the top of a ferment- 

 ing dunghill, from 12 to 13 inches thick, and al- 

 low it to remain there while the process is carry- 

 ing on with activity, and afterwards separate it 

 carefully from the heap, and it will havo been im- 

 pregnated with the most fertilizing virtues. The 

 composts, which of late have attracted such uni- 

 versal attention, and occupied so large a space in 

 all agricultural publications, originated in the dis- 

 covery of this absorbing power of the earth, and 

 in the application of it to the most beneficial pur- 

 poses. A skilful agriculturist would no more think 

 of allowing a violent fermentation to be going on 

 in his dunghill, unmixed with earth and other mat- 

 ter to fix and secure the gaseous elements than the 

 distiller would suffer his apparatus to be set at. 

 work, without surmounting his still with the worm 

 to cool and condense the ratified spirit, which 

 ascends by evaporation. In both, the most pre- 

 cious matter is that which assumes the seriform 

 state ; and to behold it escaping with unconcerned 

 indifference, is a demonstration of the most pro- 

 found ignorance." 



Rye, as long as a liberty pole. A bunch of rye, 

 grown the present season by Mr. Isaac Stone of 

 Walihaui, is left in the N. E. Farmer Office, which 

 contains stalks, or culms 7 feet 4 inches in length. 



ITEMS OF INTELLIGENCE. 



Depopulated Village. Extract of a letter from a trav- 

 eller, dated at St. Louis. 



A few miles below Alton, on the Mississippi, I passed 

 a deserted village, the wdiole population of which had 

 been destroyed by the " Milk sickness." [A fatal spas- 

 modic disease, peculiar to the Valley of the Mississippi. 

 It first attacks the cattle, and then those who eat beef or 

 drink milk.] The hamlet consisted of a couple of mills, 

 and a number of frame houses, not one of which was 

 now tenanted ; but the dried weeds of last year choked 

 the threshold of the latter, and the raceways of the 

 mills were cumbered up with floating timber, while the 

 green slime of two summers hung- heavy upon their mo- 

 tionless wheels. Not an object but ourselves moved 

 through the silent town ; and the very crows them- 

 selves seemed to make a circuit around the fatal place 

 when they came in view of the thickly sown burial 

 ground on the skirts of the deserted village. 



Saffron. Some of the Hatfield farmers have begun to 

 cultivate this medical and coloring plant in the field ; 

 six or seven acres have been planted this season. It re- 

 quires a good deal of labor, especially in gathering the 

 flowers. A farmer who has cultivated it a few years 

 past, thinks that after the flowering season commences 

 the gathering of the flowrets from an acre of saffron 

 will employ five girls for a month. The price of Saf- 

 fron was high the last year ; 6ome sold in New York at 

 $1,50 per pound. It may not bring half that sum this 

 year. A square rod, it is said, will yield a pound or 

 more. 



Saffron has been extensively cultivated in some coun- 



ties of England for centuries, but the English Saffron h* 

 a different plant from ours ; it does not belong to the same 

 class. The English plant continues several years, ours 

 is annual. The flowrets of the English Saffron are pur- 

 ple, ours are yellow. Ours is called bastard-Saffron by 

 the English. This kind is imported into England from 

 the East Indies. The English Saffron after it is dried 

 and made into cakes, does not average over 35 pounds 

 to 1 lie acre. Saffron is used in medicine ; and in Eu- 

 rope by dairy-women, confectioners, painters, dyers, ifcc. 

 — Ha mpsh ire Gazette. 



A new locomotive of great power and masterly ma- 

 chinery has been constructed for the New Castle and 

 Frcnclitown Rail Road, by Mr. E. A. G. Young, of Nor- 

 folk. The Beacon states, that on the first trial of the en- 

 gine, notwithstanding the stiffness of the machinery, and 

 without any headway being given to it, it ascended the 

 inclined plane at Frenchtown, (the grade of which is 

 42 feetto the mile) with a load of o.j 1-2 tons, at the rate 

 of 1'2 miles per hour. — Baltimore Jlmerir.an. 



JVew Steam Carriage. A Manchester correspondent 

 of the Globe sayB ; " this day (Thursday se'night) a tri- 

 al was made with a new steam carriage, built by Messrs. 

 Sharp, Roberts &■ Co. of the place, carrying fifty to 

 sixty persona ; it went off in great style on the Oxford 

 road, and did six miles in twenty minutes. This is a 

 rate of travelling on the common road far surpassing 

 any thing hitherto attempted, and will suggest the inr 

 quiry whether it will be necessary to go to the expense 

 of making Rail Roads. 



Experiment of Dr. Hunter. The celebrated Dr. Hun- 

 ter'gave one of his children a full glass of sherry every 

 (lay after dinner for a week. The child was then about 

 four years old, and had never been accustomed to wine. 

 To another of the same family, under similar circumstan- 

 ces lie o-ave a large orange for the same space of time. 

 At the end of the week he found a very material differ- 

 ence in the pulse, heat of body, and state of bowels, of 

 the two children. In the first the pulse was quickened, 

 the heat increased, and the bowels deranged, whilst the 

 second had every appearance of health. He then re- 

 versed the experiment, to the first he gave the orange, 

 and to the second the wine. The effects followed as be- 

 fore ; a striking evidence of the pernicious effects of vi- 

 nous liquor on the functions of life in a full health. 



Bottled Oysters. We saw a day or two since the neck 

 of a common pint rum bottle found in an oyster bed in 

 our harbor, and in which a number of erratic oysters 

 had taken up their lodgings. They had most undoubt- 

 edly, introduced themselves when quite young, and had 

 so snugly invested themselves to the inner surface, and 

 became so firmly attached to their unnatural abode, that 

 it was impossible to extricate them without actually 

 breaking the bottle. In this predicament they died. 

 They must have lived there a long time. The condi- 

 tion of these stupid oysters fitly illustrates the history of 

 the tipler. He is introduced to the bottle in early life, 

 and sucks away at its contents year after year— and be- 

 comes more and more cemented to it ; it is at last the 

 permanent abode of his unnatural appetite ; in ninety 

 nine cases out of a hundred, the rough hand of death 

 alone can dissolve the connexion, and he dies as stupid 

 as the oyster. — Portsmouth Journal. 



Remedy for Hingioorms. A correspondent of the Amer- 

 ican Farmer writes as follows : " After I had the tetter 

 nearly twenty years on my hand, and had used a hun- 

 dred dollars worth of tetter ointment, which took off ths 

 skin repeatedly without effecting a cure, a friend advis- 

 ed me to obtain some blood root (called also red-root, In- 

 dian paint, &c.) to slice it in vinegar, and afterwards 

 wash the part affected with the liquid. I did so, and in 

 a few days the scurf was removed, and my diseased 

 hand was as whole as the other. 



