DKVOTED TO AGKICULTUEE, HOBTICUIiTTJEE, AND KINDEED ARTS, 



NEW SERIES. 



Boston, April, 1869. VOL. III.— NO. 4. 



R. P. EATON & CO., Publishers, 

 Office, 34 Merchants' Row. 



MONTHLY. 



SIMON BROWN, 1 Editors 

 S. FLETCILER, \ •^''"ORS. 



ASPECTS AND DUTIES OF APRIL. 



Oflf where the steep bank fronts the southern sky, 

 By lanes or brooks where sunbeams love to lie, 

 A cowslip-peep will open, faintly coy, 

 Soon seen and gathered by a wandering boy. — Clare, 



F ALL the months, April 

 is the most inspiring. 

 Not because it has the 

 most pleasing character, 

 the softest airs, the love- 

 -'^liest flowers and richest 

 perfumes. Not these, 

 nor pleasant walks, nor 

 charming rural drives. 

 The word April means 

 "to open." It is the 

 month when the earth 

 opens her bosom again, 

 and invites the husband- 

 man forth to cast seed 

 into her warm embrace, Avhere it shall fruc- 

 tify and bear him fruit abundantly. It is 

 juvenile and fickle, we admit. "Fickle as a 

 fond maiden with her first lover ; coying it 

 with the young sun till he withdraws his beams 

 from her, and then weeping till she gets them 

 back again." April puts a spirit of youth in 

 everything. All nature is animated anew. 

 The cocks crow, hens cackle, cows low and 

 lambs bleat. The earth puts on a new man- 

 tle. Hardy flowers peep out in the moist 

 valleys, and those more tender, in sunny 

 nooks on the hills, -flanked by the green and 

 tender young grass. The mosses on the rocks 



throw out their tiny blossoms, and try to per- 

 fect themselves and thus continue their kind, 

 before May suns may be too fervent for them. 



There is a time for all things ; so in April 

 there is a best time to do certain things which 

 are peculiarly ours, as farmers, to do. One 

 is to complete a plan — if not already done — 

 for all the operations of our spring and sum- 

 mer work, so that there shall be no doubting 

 or halting as to what lands are to be ploughed, 

 what crops put in, what buildings or fences 

 erected or repaired, and what help shall be 

 depended upon to perform the work. Some 

 may say that "suflicient unto the day is the 

 evil thereof." But labor is noi an evil ; it is 

 a blessing, and that blessing may be greatly 

 multiplied to each one of us by finding it in 

 a well-regulated business, — in a complete sys- 

 tem in all our labors. Then each duty may 

 be performed in its own appropriate time, 

 and its work done and out of the way of other 

 work that will naturally succeed it. 



Another duty is to look to the condition 0/ 

 the higlmays, and see that all labor needed 

 upon them is done in the month of April, 

 Most of the highway surveyors are farmers. 

 They do not disturb the soil of their fields 

 while in a wet and heavy state, because they 

 know it will have a strong tendency to , make 

 it compact, and greatly increase the labor of 

 cultivating it through the summer. For this 

 reason, therefore, April is the time to repair 

 the highways. A dollar judiciously expended 



