1855. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



121 



and to show the pleasure and advantage of well- 

 directed skill and enterprise applied to land on 

 which our honored fathers toiled. 1 see no means 

 Letter suited to train up and retain in all our old 

 towns, a substantial, intelligent, worthy yeoman- 

 ry, such as must ever constitute the bone and 

 sincAv of New England's strength. The hot haste 

 to bo rich often tempts to sjieculation, and bold 

 adventures in untried spheres, far away from 

 home, resulting, many a time, in disappointment 

 and sorrow. 



3. I thank you for laying open so many fields 

 of investigation connected with agriculture, 

 which enlist so much talent and science, showing 

 that there is range for the powers of most gifted 

 minds, in the domains over which extends the 

 farmer's sway. We have learned effectually, 

 that ignorance and blind tradition will not make 

 our fields teem with their varied fruits, and that 

 the scientific, enlightened mind, is demanded to 

 direct the laborer in the proper tillage of the 

 earth. 



4. I thank you for calling our citizens away 

 from dangerous strife and political turmoil, to 

 one grand, common interest, not only of New 

 England, but of our whole country. Patriotism 

 bids you good speed, and gathers all her true- 

 hearted sons, in fraternal fellowship under the 

 banner of peace which you lift on high, display- 

 ing on its snow-white folds the olive-branch and 

 dove. J. Lee. 



Remarks. — (a.) How vividly has this sentence 

 brought to mind the long days of team-driving, 

 both in the fields and on the road, of our early 

 youth. It brings a pang now, to remember the 

 tedious hours up and down those interminable 

 furrows, with a plowman at the handles as slug- 

 gish and drowsy as ourselves, after the novelty of 

 the first few "rounds" had passed away. To 

 him, there was no beauty in the path — no shin- 

 ing ore — no stores of grain or grass, no germ of 

 bud, or flower, or fruit ; the furrow, a furrow 

 "was to him, and nothing more." To him, it 

 had never been taught that the clods of the val- 

 ley contained any principle of life, and their ani- 

 mated beings were pressed under his heel with 

 thoughtless indifference. But when another came, 

 him, honored sire, from whose lips fell the first 

 and early lessons to our impatient mind, how 

 soon supineness and indifference departed. Flow- 

 ers sprang up along the path — the furrows were 

 peopled with animated life, indispensable to the 

 whole plan, and affording texts for the most in- 

 teresting and useful discourse. Standing over 

 the upturned nest of the field-mouse, and behold- 

 ing its "wee bit home in ruins," elicited a stan- 

 za of the Farmer Poet — 



"\fee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, 

 O, what a pauic's in thy bryastie ! 

 Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 



Wi' bickering brattle ! 

 I wad be laith to rin and cliase thee, 



Wi' murd'ring pattle 1" 



and tlicn with easy and natural transition, he 

 would give a brief sketch of the life of our broth- 



er farmer and poet of nature, Robert Burns. So 

 the denizens of the air afforded a theme. If wild 

 geese were winging their way north to those in- 

 hospitable regions, where even man dares seldom 

 approach, — or if their leader pursued his track- 

 less way south, the haljits of this interesting part 

 of creation were explained, and the cause of their 

 particular movements given. Now, while the 

 team rests, comes our old friend, the bob-o-link, 

 and on a neighboring maple, gives us his first 

 song of the season. Tiien their habits were giv- 

 en ; how the males change their plumage in the 

 autumn, and both sexes congregate and pass 

 south in flocks, feeding on the wild oats, on the 

 banks of the great rivers, or resting in the exten- 

 sive corn-fields, after having become fat. Then what 

 a wonderful instinct they observe in the spring. 

 They are no longer seen in flocks, but scattered 

 all over New England, two or three pairs having 

 their habitation iu every gi-ecu meadow in prox- 

 imity'' to the dwellings of man ; few or none be- 

 ing found in secluded places. And so, with free 

 and pleasant discourse of the principles involved 

 in the labor to be performed, of the animate and 

 inanimate objects about us, of soil, tree, flower, 

 fruit, stock, crops, and of the love and ■ isdom of 

 Him who gave and controls them all, the way 

 would grow short, the labor light, and the even- 

 ing found us returning to the loved ones at home 

 as equally pleased as ourselves, with the rational 

 and interesing duties that had fallen to the lot of 

 each through the day. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



We thankfully acknowledge the receipt of nu- 

 merous and most excellent communications upon 

 various topics, and from gentlemen of great prac- 

 tical knowledge of the subjects, which they dis- 

 cuss. Deducting a paper or two indicted by 

 some young friend with one foot on Ilelicon and 

 the other on Parnassus, and whose wild hexame- 

 ters have probably saved him from a flital coUapse, 

 and we have not one among them all but contains 

 sovind and valuable instruction. Some of them 

 will be deferred for the present, in order to pre- 

 sent them at more seasonable moments ; but all 

 shall have a place, first in the weekly paper, and 

 then in a more permanent form, in the monthly 

 Farmer. 



Farmers! Now is the time to .loritc. Write 

 for some paper, if not for this. Review your op- 

 erations of the past summer ; take up any par- 

 ticular crop. Begin by setting down first the na- 

 ture of the soil, whether it is high or low, wet or 

 dry, drained or not ; then the time and manner 

 of plowing, and tlic entire preparation of the 

 field, including manure, for the reception of the 

 crop. Continue tliis process with other similar 

 lands appropriated to the same crop ou your own 



