18oS. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



139 



up cloth that had not been returned. I went 

 through a part of Enfield, Pelham, Amherst and 

 Belchertown. Their farming and living was of 

 the meanest sort. The mowing fields were full of 

 bushes. The fences were poor. The houses were 

 small, unpainted and open. Back of the house 

 stood a haj'-stack, with a few poor cattle eating 

 into it at the risk of being buried up. Right by 

 the door was half a load of green wood, the axe 

 standing in a log that the owner was too lazy to 

 split. Sitting in the chimney corner within, you 

 ■would find a man with his face burnt up with 

 cider brandy, and about the house a poor, dis- 

 couraged looking woman, with a few half-naked 

 children. The school-houses are like the dwell- 

 ing-houses, hardly fit for the cattle. As to the 

 people I Avanted to see, no one could tell anything 

 about them. They had died, run away, disap- 

 peared nobody knew where. 1 went on a fool's 

 errand. 



"This was forty years ago. I did not go over 

 the ground again till last year, when I went to 

 buy timber for our new mill. It was another 

 country. The bushes were out of the fields, the 

 hay-stacks were covered by good barns. Nice 

 painted houses stood where the old hovels stood 

 before. The brandy drinkers, too, had died off", 

 and the women and children, with their bright 

 looks and neat, comfortable dresses, had no re- 

 semblance to the poor creatures I saw there be- 

 fore. I can show you a bill in which I am charged 

 fifty cents for cotton cloth not so good as we 

 make now for six, but I tell you. Sir, human na- 

 ture has gone ahead in the last fifty years more 

 than cotton machinery. It's mind, wideawake, 

 that makes progress. AVe have improved our 

 machines now, but we shall improve them more. 

 For every man^s noddle noic-a-days is on the 

 think." 



To those who mourn the lateness of their ad- 

 vent, and sigh for the past, I commend the above. 

 It will aid them in forming another brilliant pe- 

 riod about the dear old times. To others it may 

 furnish the occasion of thankfulness for their 

 happier lot, and an encouragement to still fui'ther 

 improvement. x. 



CANDY AND POISOM". 



A paper on "Colored Confectionary" was re- 

 cently read before the British Association, from 

 which we condense some valuable and novel in- 

 formaiion. We learn that, for economy's sake, 

 confectioners, in coloring candies, &c., have re- 

 course for their greens to Brunswick green, car- 

 bonate of copper, or arsenite of copper ; for the 

 yellows, to chromate of lead or gamboge ; for 

 their reds, to red lead, vermilion, or cinnabar ; 

 and for their whites, to white lead. These are 

 only a few of the pernicious coloring agents used, 

 and' they are among the deadliest poisons. The 

 way in which these poisons are laid on also de- 

 serves a word of passing remark. In some in- 

 stances a very thin coating of the coloring mat- 

 ter is used, so as to spread over a very large sur- 

 face a small portion of the material used ; but 

 in other cases the very reverse is the fact, and in 

 one instance a quantity of arsenite of copper 

 sufficient to destroy the life of a healthy adult 

 was procured from a piece of ornamental table 

 confectionary, not the size of a sugar almond. 

 Confectioners have no reason to use these poi- 



sons, for there are harmless vegetable colors 

 enough to answer their purposes. Among these 

 are — for jellows, saffron, tumeric, French berries, 

 quercitron bark, fustic-wood, and lakes of the 

 last four colors. Reds — cochineal, lake ditto, in- 

 cluding carmine, Brazil wood, madder, and lakes 

 of the last two colors. Purples — madder purple, 

 logwood and indigo, any of the lakes with indigo 

 or litmus. Blues — litmus and indigo. Greens 

 — sap green (ramnus catharticits,) mixtures of 

 any of the vegetable yellows or lakes with indi- 

 go, including Persian berries and indigo. Nor 

 M'ould the products of their arts suffer in their 

 attractive appearance by the employment of such 

 colors. We most strongly advise every one who 

 values his health, and perhaps his life, as mat- 

 ters are at present constituted, sedulously to 

 avoid partaking of articles of confectionary ex- 

 hibiting either blue or green, but especially of 

 such as are green, these latter being but too fre- 

 quently of a most deadly poisonous nature. — 

 A7n. Druggist's Circular. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. 



Mr. H., of B., New Jersey, with a family of 

 four adult persons, and with the intention of be- 

 ing strictly economical, deems it necessary to 

 consume eight pounds of Havana sugar and one 

 or two pounds of grained sugar a week, beside a 

 good deal of molasses and a little honey and 

 syrup. The aggregate is equivalent to at least 

 five hundred pounds of sugar a year. 



Mr. A., of J., in. New Jersey, in a family often 

 persons, several of whom are mere children, uses 

 nine pounds of Havana sugar and one pound of 

 loaf sugar, besides much molasses and syrup, 

 every week. This is equal to the consumption of 

 something more than five hundred pounds of 

 sugar, yearly. 



Mr. H., of , in the State of New York, 



consumes, in a family of little more the average 

 size and number, from four hundred to seven 

 hundred pounds of maple sugar yearly, besides 

 some molasses and honey, and a small quantity 

 of sugar from Havana. 



Mrs. J. C, of E., in Massachusetts, in a com- 

 pany of about twenty persons, partly boarders 

 and partly her own children, uses seventy-four 

 pounds of sugar a month, besides several gallons 

 of syrup and molasses ; equal, it is believed, to 

 about one thousand pounds of sugar yearly. 



Now, reader, is not here a tremendous waste ? 

 In the first place, it is a waste of vital energy ; 

 for sugar is almost Avholly carbon, and the terri- 

 ble confiagration it causes in the lungs, exhausts, 

 prematurely, the vital energies of the system and 

 thus wastes the precious stock which God has as- 

 signed us, of health and life. But, secondly, it 

 is a waste of property ; for most of our food is 

 sweet enough, without any addition of saccharine 

 substance. Some of the articles which come to 

 our tables contain from four to eight per cent, of 

 saccharine matter; so that he who consumes si>; 

 or eight pounds of food of various kinds a day 

 receives from four to six ounces of sugar at the 

 same time. And who that is not wiser than lie 

 who formed him and appointed him his daily 

 food shall say that from a quarter of a pound to 



