204 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Mat 



This improvement must load to a great saving to 

 our country, as it is calculated that no less than 

 §5.000, 000 is lost annually by the souring of flour 

 and tlie heating of grain in piles, — much, if not 

 all, of which may be saved by the application of 

 t'-.is invention, which is neither complex nor ex- 

 pensive, but simple and cheap. A barrel of corn 

 meal, packed in one of Pearsall's patent tubular 

 barrels, arrived in this city on the 7th of this 

 month from Louisville. It was put up in July, 

 and shipped to New Orleans, was kept several 

 weeks in the hold of a steamboat, and afterwards 

 housed in a warehouse until about the 1st of De- 

 cember, and yet is now perfectly sweet. 



Scientific American . 



For the Iftiv Ensland Farmer. 



THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE. 



EY HENRY F. FRENCH. 



It is strange to think how much we pay for the 

 privilege of living in a cold climate. The hay crop 

 of New England, in 1850, was about three-and-a- 

 half millions of tons, and was worth, when stored 

 for use, about thirty-five millions of dollars. All 

 this, with a trifling deduction for what was ex- 

 ported, was fed out to our cattle, sheep and hors- 

 es, to sustain them during the winter mouths. In 

 the Southern part of our country, no such crop is 

 raised, for it is not needed. Vast droves of cattle 

 find abundant food, summer atid winter, in the 

 woods and on the prairies, with no care from 

 man. Thus we pay in New England, for the 

 privilege of keeping our very cattle in a cold cli- 

 mate, thirty-five millions of dollars. And this is 

 by no means all. We feed out to them a vast 

 amount of ^rain. We build for them expensive 

 barns and stables, a luxury which Southern ani- 

 mals neither enjoy, nor have occasion for. They 

 are far more comfortable out of doors, under a 

 warm sky. 



AYe expend a great amount of labor and time in 

 feeding out three-and-a-half million tons of hay, 

 a fork-full at a time, eacli winter. 



Again, there were in New England, by the 

 census of 1850, a few more than a half-million of 

 families, occupying nearly half-a-million of dwel- 

 lings. I think it would be a fair estimate, that 

 the annual average cost of keeping up every 

 dwelling to the necessary point of comfort in New 

 England, above the cost in the Southern States, 

 on account of cold merely, is thirty dollars, or in 

 all fifteen millions of dollars. To this, add for 

 the extra fuel the like amount of fifteen millions, 

 and we have already, for merely hay for our cat- 

 tle, and additional shelter and warmth for our 

 families, a tax of sixty-five million of dollars a 

 year, for the luxury of cold weather. 



But again, tliey say the dog-day costume of a 

 dandy in New Orleans is, a clean dickey and a 

 pair of spurs ! We must not forgot the matter of 

 Nothing. What additional clothing is really 



' necessary in New England beyond what a South- 

 ern clime requires ? Wo will call it the very 

 small amount of thirty dollars for each family of 

 about five persons, and this gives us fifteen mil- 

 lions more, making eighty millions a year in' all. 

 Now when we consider all this, and the disadvan- 

 tages under which farmers labor, at the North, 

 as to performing their labor — how we are hur- 

 ried and driven to do our fencing, plowing and 

 planting in a very few days, while no farther 

 South than Maryland the plow runs every 

 month in the year — it is enough to make us pause 

 and consider, whether, indeed, our lines have fall- 

 en in pleasant places, and whether we have a 

 goodly heritage. 



It is true, we do pay, in New England, a tax, 

 an annual tax, equal to one hundred millions of 

 dollars, for the additional food, shelter and fuel 

 necessary for subsistence in a cold climate. How 

 much additional labor we annually perform to 

 bring out from a hard and sterile soil our vari- 

 ous crops, beyond what they would require to be 

 raised by the same skill and thrift, from the deep 

 and fertile valleys of the South and West, no man 

 would dare to estimate, and the wonder, only, to 

 a Southern man who visits New England, is, that 

 we undertake to cultivate such land at all. 



A hundred millions of dollars a year is a largo 

 sum to pay for sunshine merely — for what, in oth- 

 er words, in another climate, the warmth of the 

 sun would render unnecessary. 



But, there is a law of compensation running 

 through all nature. If we travel towards the 

 South, in our own country, as we leave New 

 England, we see as we go farther, less and 

 less of the indications of comfort and refinement. 

 The house is less and less like a Home. As 

 the climate allows the members of the family 

 more freedom abroad, less is thought of the in- 

 ternal convenience and of the outward adornment 

 of the dwelling. Living apart, and not in villa- 

 ges, there are less advantages for education and 

 social intercourse. 



Even in Old Virginia, in 1850, there were by 

 the census, seventy-seven thousand free white na- 

 tive adults that could not read or write ! No 

 wonder one of her politicians recently expressed 

 great surprise at a recent proposition in the Mas- 

 sachusetts Legislature, to limit the right ot 

 voting to citizens Nvho can read and write ! 



The lavish expenditure of human labor strikes 

 every New England man who travels Southward. 

 That human toil is to be saved, seems never to 

 have been thought of. Where the man himself 

 must do the work, the head will do its part, and 

 save the hands ; but where the head of one di- 

 rects the hands of others, the labor is never skil- 

 fully applied. 



Slavery accounts for many of the facts to which 



