DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND ITS KIK"DRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. X. 



BOSTON, OCTOBEK, 1858. 



NO. 10. 



JOEL NOURSE, Pkoprietok. 

 Office. ..13 Comjiercial St. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 

 HENRY F. FRENCH, \ Editors. 



CALENDAR FOR OCTOBER. 



Those virgin leaves, of purest vivid green. 



Which charmed ere yet they trembled on the trees, 



Now cheer the sober landscape in decay ; 



The Lime first fading, and the golden Birch, 



"With bark of silver line ; the moss-grown Oak, 



Tenacious of its leaves of russet brown ; 



The ensanguined Dogwood ; and a thousand tints 



Which Flora, dressed in all her pride of bloom, 



Could scarcely equal, decorate the groves. Aiken. 



■<^. 





CTOBER, like every 

 other month, has 

 its peculiar charac- 

 teristics, character- 

 istics which, omit- 

 ted, or changed for 

 those of some oth- 

 er month, October 

 ii would be October 

 no longer. "The 

 ? month that we 

 ' have just left be- 

 hind us was made 

 up, for the most 

 part, by consum- 

 mations ; the promises of 

 the year being almost for- 

 gotten in the fulness of 

 their performance, and the season 

 standing still to enjoy itself, and to 

 "-"' let its admirers satiate themselves 

 upon the rich completeness of its charms. It is 

 now gone, and October is come ; and Hope is 

 come with it ; and the general impulse that we 

 feel is, to loolc foricard again, as we have done 

 from the beginning of the year." 



September brought most of the crops to per- 

 fection — the small grains, and golden corn, the de- 

 licious fruits and substantial apple, continuous 

 through the year, and excellent in so many forms, 

 ■while some of the roots, careless of the frost, re- 

 tain their rank foliage until severe cold weather 

 sets in, and only yield to the united power of 

 frosty nights and warm October suns. The 



grass grows brown and sere, and cattle feed with 

 cold noses, or look wistfully at the barn for a 

 supply from their winter stores. 



So in the animal kingdom ; OCTOBER brings 

 its influences upon them. Crfckets are black and 

 lusty, and full of song, and feed eagerly upon the 

 apples left in their way. Scarcely a swallow of 

 all the thousands that twittered about the barns, 

 is left ; the martins, also, that enlivened the cot- 

 tage with their social habits, followed their in- 

 stincts and are probably now passing a season of 

 rest in milder climes with their young reared 

 with us. The faint chirp of the bob-o-link that 

 was occasionally heard high in the clear air late 

 in September, has now entirely ceased, and the 

 numberless meadows made vocal by them in the 

 Summer months, cannot claim one among them 

 all to-day. They have now become objects for 

 sportsmen on the margins of the Delaware, Po- 

 tomac, and other rivers, where they collect in 

 vast numbers to feed on the wild oats which 

 abound there, and are called Reed-birds. Those 

 that escape the slaughter here, continue their 

 course still further south, and in the rice fields 

 of Georgia and the contiguous States are es- 

 teemed a great delicacy as Bice-birds. But the. 

 Field Lark still springs from the grass, perch- 

 es upon the highest twig of the old apple tree, 

 and whistles as in June. The Blue Jay, start- 

 led in her solitary haunts, screams and flies to 

 a thicker retreat, making the woods ring with 

 her energetic notes. Some of the smaller birds 

 remain, but day by day become less frequent. 

 But the year, in "all its aspects, has reached its 

 grand climacteric, and is fast falling 'into the 

 sere and yellow leaf.' " Every day a flower drops 

 from out the wreath that binds its brow — not to 

 be renewed. Every hour the sun looks more 

 and more askance upon it, and the winds, those 

 summer flatterers, come to it less fawningly. 

 Every breath shakes down showers of its leafy 

 attire, leaving it gradually barer and. barer, for 



