DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. VII. 



BOSTON, AUGUST, 1855. 



NO. 8. 



JOEL NOURSE, Proprietor, 

 Office.. ..QuiNCT Hall. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 



HENRY F. FRENCH, ( Editors 



:\' 



.c? 



V 



CALENDAR FOR AUGUST. 



"The Farmer's life displays in every part 

 A moral lesson to the sensual heart." 



UGusT, the last of the 

 Summer months, 

 has come ; the ful • 

 ness of the year has 

 past ; the wheat, 

 and some other im- 

 portant crops, are 

 gathered; and 

 though the pota- 

 ^toes, and other 

 roots, the apples, 

 the buckwheat and 

 '^ the golden corn re- 

 main to be harvest- 

 ed ; yet the flush and ful- 

 ness of the year are gone. 

 Like a beautiful woman, 

 just past her prime, when 

 the vigor of health and 

 fulness of outline are so 

 imperceptibly touched as 

 only to add new charms, 

 so the vegetable kingdom compensates us for the 

 loss of its robust habit in a thousand beautiful 

 and unthought of shades and shapes. Indeed, 

 "the whole face of Nature lias undergone, since 

 last month, an obvious change; obvious to those 

 who delight to observe all her changes and opera- 

 tions, but not sufficiently striking to insist on |)e- 

 ing seen generally by those who can read no char- 

 acters but such as are written in a text hand. If 

 the general colors of all the various departments 

 of natural scenery are not changed, their Imes 

 are ; and if there is not yet observable the infinite 

 variety of autumn, there is as little the extreme 

 monotony of summer. The woods, as Avell as the 

 single timber trees that occasionally start up with 

 such fine effect in the midst of meadows and corn- 

 fields, ^Y0 shall now find sprinkled with what at 

 first looks like gleams of scattered sunshine lying 



pmm^ 



among the leaves, but what, on examination, we 

 shall find to be the new foliage that has been put 

 forth since midsummer, and which yet retains all 

 the brilliant gx-een of the spring." 



As we said of July, so we say of this month — 

 it is peculiarly AuGusT-like. The general ap- 

 pearance of the country is unlike that of any 

 other season. The mornings and evenings are 

 sometimes a little chilly, then close, damp, "mug- 

 gy," and hot, with a kind of sufibcating influ- 

 ence on the sick, while the glaring sun at noon 

 burns with fervent heat. These are the joyous 

 hours, however, of the locusts, whose intense 

 earnestness of song is only less fierce than the 

 sun itself, and wakes the tired lalwrer too soon 

 from his accustomed nap at noon. The air glis- 

 tens with the radiated heat, fowls drop their 

 wings, cattle stand in pools, or seek the shade of 

 some friendly tree, standing singly on elevated 

 land, where every breath may cool their heated 

 sides. Dogs plunge into the water, while the 

 cat seeka some dark corner, where neither sun or 

 flies will torment, and sleeps quietly away the 

 day. Young cocks begin to crow lustily, often 

 starting their "pitch" a good deal too high, and 

 break down before they have accomplished half 

 the scale. Young bitterns occasionally show their 

 javelin-like bills above the high grass, on the 

 look-out for danger, as they leave their native 

 meadows for some wider field of action. Crickets 

 chirp solemnly in the evening, children crunch 

 green apples and hate to go to bed, though the 

 latter only is not peculiar to the season. 



Those who observe, will notice tliat August is 

 not July or September ; that it lias its appropri- 

 ate functions, as have all the otlicr Months, and 

 that it is devoted to the discharge of them. 



All is August-\\kG. The birds have reared their 

 young, and taught them, to perfection, how to 

 fly, how to provide their food, how, in their turn, 

 to build and lay and rear their young, and when 

 to leave their native land and flee to kindlier 



