42 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Feb. 



REVIEW OF THE. JANUARY NO. OF THE FARMER. 



Mr, Moore : — I have been looking over your Jan- 

 uary number, and am much pleased with its appear- 

 ance, both as to matter and manner. I admire that 

 so few among your 20,000 subscribers become con- 

 tributors to its pages. There is probably no one 

 single individual among them but what knows some 

 one fact that accident, experience or reason has 

 taught him, that would be interesting and valuable to 

 perhaps nine-tenths of your readers. I can hardly 

 conceive of a person who has the good taste to take 

 and read your paper, but what has the ability to com- 

 municate his experience through its pages. In my 

 voyage of life I have never yet found that sober per- 

 son that I could not dig something out of that was 

 worth knowing. All useful facts, communicated in 

 howsoever homely style, with your correction of 

 grammatical construction and orthography, are of 

 paramount importance. I am convinced that it is 

 impossible for an editor — a single mind, to be able to 

 amuse and instruct his readers, for years and years 

 together, unassisted : his pond of thought, ideas and 

 facts, will eventually run out — to use a homely 

 phrase, his barrel will run emptyings; therefore, 

 those interested in multiplying facts, and sendino- 

 forth the knowledge and experience of years, in the 

 different operations and effects of the great science 

 of agriculture, ought to lend a hand. 



You, reader — yes, you — as Nathan said to David, 

 " Thou art the man," who can thus render some 

 important benefit to your fellow laborer in the great 

 battle of life ; which, like the tears of the recording 

 angel, may blot out some of your short comings, with 

 the congratulation of saying, I have not lived in vain; 

 a satisfaction that many, I fear, in this breathing 

 world, who have heaped up the acres and the paltry 

 dollars, will not arrive at and who will cease to be 

 without being able to say, I have left one valuable 

 fact or discovery for the benefit of mankind. Per- 

 haps, Mr. Editor, I shall come broadly in that cata- 

 gory ; but if so, it shan't be for lack of good will. 

 There is a saying that Doctors never take their 

 own medicines, and that they try it on a dog first ; 

 but with your leave, I propose to take mine and to 

 try it on you, by looking over your monthly numbers 

 and telling you plainly what some folks think of 

 your articles — mechanical execution, errors of the 

 printer, &c, &,c, a kind of fire-side review, with the 

 notions and views of one of the million. 



Messrs. Editors:— In your opening article for the 

 January number, in speaking of the exhausting sys- 

 tems of planting and farming, you seem to be growing 

 very tender footed on the subject of the " peculiar 

 institution" of our southern brethren, in that its effects 

 are not deteriorating and fatal to the soil it cultivates. 

 It has been said that the foot of the slave was rank 

 poison to the soil. This is not true, literally, and 

 only co-relatively as a result. The system is fatal 

 to the continuance and permanence of the soil's pro- 

 ductibility. The cotton, rice, and sugar crops, can 

 not at the present rates be made except by slave 

 labor ; all of these crops impoverish the soil, as there 

 is no return — n o rotation of grass, or other grain 

 crops to enrich it ; and in those warm climates, 

 animals are not housed and fed to make manure, the 

 land is soon exhausted, soon run down, and there is no 

 remedy but a different system, different crops, and an 

 intelligent population. The pecooliar institution must 

 be abandoned, or new worlds discovered for its use. 



Artichokes.— The article recommending that what- 

 ever is worth growing, is worth growing properly, is 

 a truism not to be controverted, and which is applied 

 to Horse-Radish and Artichokes, which I consider a 

 nuisance and not worth growing at all. It would be 

 a good operation to exchange them for Canada this- 

 tles—any thing but Red Root ; and as to clearing 

 them out yearly, it would take Father Miller's uni- 

 versal conflagration to do it, and nothing short. 



Wire Fence.— -Mr. Adams' manner of tr e ttin<r up 

 this fence is ingenious, simple, and cheap* but°that 

 such fences can ever prevail, for turnino- cattle 

 horses, or hogs, is hardly admissable. The wires 

 are so minute, that they are not visible and carry no 

 terror to a creature disposed to ramble. An animal 

 the least frightened, unruly, or wild, would mind it 

 no more than the "spider's most attenuated thread." 

 Clover.— Your Grecian correspondent labors under 

 a most singular hallucination, in asserting that clover 

 will not grow when sown in the spring on the wheat 

 crop. If cast early enough, before the frosts have 

 ceased to elevate and crumble the soil, so as to cover 

 the see<L it never fails if the seed is good, except the 

 occurrence of an exceeding dry May, which often 

 kills it. He is correct as to the value of Lucerne. 

 It is like the Quaker's horse that had but two faults 

 — one was that he was bad to catch, and the other 

 that he was worth nothing when he was cauo-ht It 

 is entirely worthless in this climate. 



Wire Worm.— Mr. Moore, in an extract you give, 

 has come to a singular conclusion on the subject of 

 tins insect — that by the use of sulphur on his seed 

 (a dry insoluble and inert substance,) he saved a crop 

 on the same field upon which he lost it three years ago. 

 It is not well settled what time is the periodic 

 transmutation of the wire worm (Water segetis.) 

 borne make it two and some three years in the larva? 

 state ; consequently if a field is troubled with it one 

 year, at the third year they have taken the imago or 

 perfect state and have departed, particularly if the 

 land was under cultivation, as there was no food or 

 convenience for propagating their species. Their 

 natural pabulum is grass roots, and in its absence 

 young wheat, corn, potatoes, &c. In many locations' 

 the first crop is invariably lost that follows green 

 sward, that has laid in grass longer than three years. 

 Col. B. P. Johnson.— I think you will be sustained 

 in your commendations of this gentleman's course, as 

 Secretary of the State Agricultural Society, as well 

 as for his attentions to the County Societies. His 

 address at the meeting of the Monroe Society was 

 capital. It was the only straight out and out, prac- 

 tical, direct to the point address I have ever heard 

 delivered on these occasions. * 



Small Holdings.— A small proprietor, who knows 

 every part of his little territory, who views it with 

 all the affection which property, especially small 

 property, naturally inspires; and also, upon that 

 account, takes pleasure not only in cultivating but 

 in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the^most 

 industrious, the most intelligent, and the most success- 

 ful.— .tfdawi Smith. 



Never allow a hedge to get foul, or anything to 

 grow in a ditch ; it is a receptacle for weed-seeds 

 and if neglected would soon make the adjoining 

 ground as foul as itself. 



