1855. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



235 



ing, and no sugar had been made. From Dor- 

 chester, N. H., the account is that the snow in 

 the woods on the first of April was six feet deep 

 in many places. 



For the JVew England Farmer. 



THE NORTHERN SPY APPLE. 



Mr. Farmer : — This new variety, which has 

 attracted so much attention in Western New 

 York, is little known in New England. No 

 apple brought into notice has elicited so many 

 and different opinions of its merits. What I said 

 of it in a report to the American Pomological 

 Society, re-printed in your paper, was intended 

 as a caution to those planting or grafting ex- 

 tensively, rather than to deter any one from 

 giving it a fair trial. 



One reason why it has been so poor a bearer is, 

 it has been extensively propagated from nursery 

 scions. In 1846, 1 paid three dollars to a Roches- 

 ter nurseryman for four dozen scions, which had 

 been cut from small nursery trees ; these were 

 grafted on old bearing trees. Scions cut from 

 them two years after, and grafted on bearing 

 trees, first produced fruit. 



Another reason why it is not an early bearer, 

 is its upright growth. A person visiting an 

 orchard of one thousand trees, containing one 

 hundred varieties, and told there is one tree only 

 of the Northern Spy, may easily select it. This 

 may be partially remedied. I bent some of the 

 most vigorous limbs on my trees and tied them 

 down,, when three years grafted, (in October,) 

 and the next season they were filled with fruit 

 buds — two years before a blossom appeared on 

 any other. 



It is a rapid grower, hardy, and requires high 

 culture, with plenty of lime or ashes, and more 

 thinning of its branches and small limbs than 

 any other sort. In quality it is decidedly the 

 best, taking the same rank in March, April and 

 May, or perhaps June, that the Gravenstcin does 

 in October and November. One bushd will, in 

 any market, when known to be in good condi- 

 tion, (not bruised by transportation,) sell for 

 more than one barrel of any other sort grown in 

 New England. 



Any man having a small space to spare for a 

 few trees, provided he likes an apple of fine tex- 

 ture, tender, of high flavor, unshrivelled, and as 

 fresh in April or May as any other in October, 

 will be satisfied if he gets but a small quantity 

 for a few years. It is deserving a general trial, 

 at least a few trees in every orchard. Should it 

 prove a good bearer, (and it may when propa- 

 gated by scions from bearing trees,) it must be a 

 great acquisition to our very small list of good 

 late-keeping apples, and may be for New England 

 what the Newtown Pippin is for New Jersey. 



Burlington, Vt., April. C. Goodrich. 



Big Carrots.— Thomas Gordon, Esq., of Bid- 

 deford, Me., has sent us two carrots, one of which 

 ya&ighs four pounds and three-quarters, after hav- 

 ing lost a goodly nip of its nether end. It prob- 

 ably weighed six pounds when taken from the 

 ground. California wHl please stand back a lit- 

 tle. 



BIRDS. 



Birds, says M. Toussenel, live more in a given 

 time than any other creatures. For, to live, is 

 not only to live ; it is also to move, act, and 

 travel. The hours of the swift, which in sixty 

 minutes can reach the distance of eighty leagues, 

 are longer than the hours of the tortoise, because 

 they are better occupied, and contain a greifter 

 number of events. Men of the present day, who 

 can go from Europe to America in little more 

 than a week, live four times as much as men 

 of the last centuiy, who took a month to make 

 the passage. People who are now fifty years of 

 age have still a longer time before thcin than 

 Michael Angelo and Voltaire had at that moment 

 when they were laid in the cradle. Independent- 

 ly of birds thus enjoj-iug more of life than all 

 other beings in the same given number of. years, 

 time seems to glide over them without leaving a 

 trace of its ofiects; or rather, time onl}' improves 

 them, reviving their colors and strengthening 

 their voices. Age increases the beauty of birds, 

 while in men it brings on ugliness. 



A bird is a model ship constructed by the hand 

 of God, in which the conditions of swiftness, 

 manageability, and lightness, are absolutely and 

 necessarily the same as in vessels built l)y the 

 hand of man. There are not in the world two 

 things which resemble each other more strongly, 

 both mechanically and physically speaking, than 

 the carcase and frame-work of a bird and a ship. 

 The breast-bone so exactly resembles a keel, that 

 the English language has retained the name. The 

 wings are the oars, the tail the rudder. That 

 original observer, Huber, the Genevese, who has 

 carefully noticed the flight of birds of prey, has 

 even made use of the metaphor thus suggested, 

 to establish a characteristic distinction lietween 

 rowers and sailers. The rowers are the falcons, 

 who have the first or second wing-feather the 

 longest, and who are able by means of this pow- 

 erful oar to dart right into the wind's eye. The 

 mere sailers are the eagles, the vultures, and the 

 buzzards, whose more rounded wings resemble 

 sails. The rowing bird is to the sailing bird 

 what the steamer, that laughs at adverse winds, 

 is to the schooner, which cannot advance against 

 them. 



The bones of high flyers, as well as their feath- 

 ers, are tubes filled with air, communicating 

 with a pulmonary reservoir of prodigious capaci- 

 ty. This rcservior is also closely connected with 

 the air-cells which lie between the interior mus- 

 cles, and which are so many swimming-bladders, 

 by aid of wliich the bird is able to inflate its vol- 

 ume, and diminish its specific gravity in propor- 

 tion. In birds that are laden with a heavy bur- 

 then of head. Nature has interposed s.> decided a 

 gap between skin and flesh, that there results an 

 almost complete detachment of the skin. Conse- 

 cjuently, they can be stripped of tlieir coating 

 just as easily as a rabbit can. In man and other 

 mammifers, the blood, in the act of breathing, 

 advances ready to meet the air ; in birds, air en- 

 tei-s to find the blood, and comes in contact with 

 it everywhere. Hence an uliiquity of respiration 

 and a rapidity of h;i3uiatosis, wliich explains the 

 untirability of tlie wings of birds. Tlio muscles 

 do not get fatigued, because they receive new 

 vigor every second from the influence of the ever 

 revived blood. A stag or a hare drops at last, 



