26 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



JAUf. 



era region. It may be said of this subject, as of 

 that to which I have ah-cady alluded, that it Is a 

 science of itself. No branch of husbandry has, 

 within the last century, engaged more of the at- 

 tention of farmers, theoretical and practical, than 

 the improvement of the breeds of domestic ani- 

 mals, and in none, perhaps, has the attention thus 

 bestowed been better repaid. By judicious selec- 

 tion and mixtures of the parent stock, and by in- 

 telligence and care in the training and nourishing 

 of the young animals, the improved breeds of the 

 present day differ probably almost as much from 

 their predecessors a hundred years ago, as we 

 may suppose the entire races of domesticated an- 

 imals do from the wild stocks from which they 

 are descended. There is no reason to suppose 

 that the utmost limit of improvement has been 

 reached in this direction. Deriving our improved 

 animals as we generally do from Europe,-— that 

 is, from a climate differing materially from our 

 own, — it is not unlikely that, in the lapse of time, 

 experience will lead to the production of a class 

 of animals, better adapted to the peculiarities of 

 our seasons than any of the transaltantic varieties 

 as they now exist. The bare repetition of the 

 words draft, speed, endurance, meat, milk, butter, 

 cheese and wool, will suggest the vast importance 

 of continued experiments on this subject, guided 

 by all the lights of physiological science. 



AGRICULTURE MORE FAVORABLE THAN CITY LIFE. 



I do not claim for agricultural life in modem 

 times the Arcadian simplicity of the heroic ages ; 

 but it is capable, Avith the aid of popular educa- 

 tion and the facilities of intercommunication, of 

 being made a pursuit more favorable than city 

 life to that average degree of virtue and happi- 

 ness to which we may reasonably aspire in the 

 present imperfect stage of being. For the same 

 reason that our intellectual and moral faculties 

 are urged to the highest point of culture by the 

 intense competition of the large town, the conta- 

 gion of vice and crime produces in a crowded 

 population a depravity of character from which 

 the more thinly inhal)ited country, though far 

 enough from being immaculate, is comparatively 

 free. Accordingly, we iind that the tenure on 

 which the land is owned and tilled — that is, the 

 average condition of the agricultural masses — 

 decides the character of a people. It is true that 

 the compact organization, the control of capital, 

 the concentrated popular talent, the vigorous 

 press, the agitable temperament of the large 

 towns, give them an influence out of proportion 

 to numbers ; but this is far less the case in the 

 United States than in most foreign countries 

 where the land is held in large masses by a few 

 powerful land-holders. Divided as it is in tliis 

 country into small or moderate-sized farms, owned, 

 for the most part, and tilled by a class of fairly 

 educated, independent, and intelligent proprie- 

 tors, the direct influence of large towns on the 

 entire population is far less considerable than in 

 Europe. Paris can at all times make a revolution 

 in France : but not even your imperial metropo- 

 lis could make a revolution in the United States. 

 What the public character loses in concentration 

 and energy by this want of metropolitan centrali- 

 zation, is more than gained by the country, in 

 the virtuous mediocrity, the decent frugality, the 

 healthfulncssjthe social tranquillity of private life. 



EVIDENCES OF GOD's INTERPOSING CARE ON 

 THE FARM. 



Speaking of the historian Hume, Mr. Everett 



says : 



Did this philosopher ever contemplate the land- 

 scape at the close of the year, when seeds, and 

 gi'ains, and fruits have ripened, and stalks have 

 withered and leaves have fallen, and winter has 



of 



forced her icy curb even into Jhe roaring jaws of 

 Niagara, and sheeted half a continent in her glit- 

 tering shroud, and all this teeming vegetation 

 and organized life are locked in cold and marble 

 obstruction ; and, after week upon Aveek and 

 month upon month have swept with sleet, and 

 chilly rain, and howling storm, over the earth, 

 and riveted their bolts upon the door of nature's 

 sepulchre ; — when the sun at length begins to 

 wheel in higher circles through the sky, and soft- 

 er winds to breathe over melting snows, — did he 

 ever behold the long hidden earth at length ap- 

 pear, and soon the timid gi-ass peep forth, and 

 anon the autumnal wheat begin to paint the field, 

 and velvet leaflets to burst from purple buds, 

 throughout the reviving forest ; and the mellow 

 soil to open its fruitful bosom to every grain and 

 seed dropped from the planter's hand, buried but 

 to spring up again, clothed with a new mysterious 

 being ; and then, as more fervid suns inflame the 

 air, and softer showers distil from the clouds, and 

 gentler dews string their pearls on twig and ten- 

 dril, did he ever watch the ripening grain and 

 fruit, pendent from stalk and vine, and tree ; the 

 meadow, the field, the pasture, the grove, each 

 after its kind, arrayed in myriad-tinted garments, 

 instinct with circulating life ; seven millions of 

 counted leaves on a single tree, each of which 

 Is a system whose exquisite complication puts to 

 shame the shrewdest cunning of the human hand ; 

 every planted seed and gi'ain, which had been 

 loaned to the earth compounding its pious usury 

 thirty, sixty, a hundred fold, — all harmoniously 

 adapted to the sustenance of living nature, — the 

 bread of a hungry world ; here a tilled cornfield, 

 whose yellow blades are nodding with the food 

 of man ; there an unplanted wilderness, — the 

 great Father's farm, — wiiere he "who hears the 

 raven's cry" has cultivated with his own hand, 

 his merciful crop of berries, and nuts, and acorns, 

 and seeds, for the humbler families of animated 

 nature — the solemn elephant, the browsing deer, 

 the wild pigeon, whose fluttering caravan darkens 

 the sky ; the merry squirrel, who bounds from 

 branch to branch, in the joy of liis little life ; — 

 has he seen all this, — does he see it every year 

 and month and day, — does he live, and move, and 

 breathe, and think, in this atmosphere of wonder, 

 — himself the greatest wonder of all, whose small- 

 est fi-bre and faintest pulsation Is as much a mys- 

 tery as the blazing glories of Orion's belt, — and 

 does he still maintain that a miracle is contrary 

 to experience ? If he has, and if he does, then 

 let him go, in the name of Heaven, and say that 

 it is contrary to experience, that the August Pow- 

 er Avhich turns the clods of the earth Into the dai- 

 ly bread of a thousand million souls could feed 

 five thousand in the wilderness ! 



Urine. — Sir John Sinclair, speaking of the val- 

 ue of this fertilizing agent, says, "Every sort of 



