1855. 



NEW ENGLAND EARMER. 



371 



with specific descriptions of all our birds. Such 

 a book is wanted by the farmer and horticultur 

 ist to place in their library, for reading and ref- 

 erence, alongside of other works on the cultiva- 

 tion of the farm or the garden. "Laura" also, 

 and other persons, who love to study the beauti- 

 ful in nature, would like to own a perfect and 

 comparatively cheap edition of American orni- 

 thology. Who will furnish such an edition? 



S. P. Fowler. 

 Danvers-port, June 16, 1855. 



A "WAKE" AMONG STUMPS! 



OR, THE "ORANGE STUMP PCLLER" IN' FITCHBURG. 



Willis, with his machine, was on hand accord- 

 ing to promise, and assailed the stumpy race 

 with vigor and success. Many hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands, during the day, were witnesses of his 

 exploits. The power of the machine is great and 

 astounding. With a single yoke of cattle, the 

 power made to bear on a stump rose from twenty- 

 five to eight hundred tons purchase; and, with 

 suitable gear, I see not why it might not be in. 

 definitely increased so as to move mountains as 

 well as massive roots. 



The stumps he routed were not pigmies, but 

 altogether respectable in girth and expanse of 

 root, and most of them rather recently cut ; and 

 had they remained undisturbed, they might have 

 outlasted the most robust man or boy, who saw 

 them hurled from their dominion. The average 

 time consumed on each may have been five min- 

 utes, though sometimes, by the aid of cross- 

 chains, four and five would heave up at once. A 

 few hours covered a large area with huge car- 

 casses ; it was what "war hawks" might call a 

 ''well-fought field," with, however, no blood or 

 groans. The spectators were impressed with but 

 one sentiment, to which they gave enthusiastic 

 utterance, namely, that the "stump puller" has 

 the element of prodigious power, a power easily 

 applied in promoting the good appearance and 

 value of rocky and stumpy lands. Every farmer 

 who has lands to cultivate or occupy by buildings, 

 knows that their value is much diminished by 

 these odious excrescences — excrescences that may 

 out-live him and his sons after him ; the many 

 live and live on through sunshine and storm, and 

 look with scorn on the longevity of the great 

 majority of mortals. 



Moreover, as the eye was made for beauty, and 

 beauty for the eye, who can look on a lawn-like, 

 verdant field, without being happier? Or who 

 can look on a field snarled and blackened by 

 stumps, without wishing these "eye sores" dis- 

 patched to Guinea or Botany Bay? Still, many 

 a farmer will perhaps daily pass and repass, for a 

 quarter of a century, a spectacle of such deform- 

 ities, and wish it gone, all gone, and ho, and the 

 son in his likeness, will live wishing, and die wish- 

 ing, and there ends the stump stir with him. 

 Whereas, should he arouse himself to a little ac- 

 tion, and apply this "puller," the first day might 

 throw up an acre of these "eye sores," the second 

 make of them a durable fence, the third plow the 

 field, the fourth plant or sow it, and then, loaded 

 and waven with fertility, it would at once re- 

 mind us of the field t'lat Heaven liad blessed. 



The economy of this operation must not escape 

 '^^■■"" Stumps were drawn on this occasion, in 



notice. 



a few minutes, at a few cents expense, which, by 

 ordinary process, would have demanded several 

 days and dollars to extirpate. Had some of them 

 lay on railroad route, it was estimated that to 

 remove them, by Irish labor, might have cost 

 from ten to twenty dollars. 



This machine should rank among the many 

 appliances of a civilizing kind which characterize 

 our times. It causes the crooked to become 

 straight and the rough places smooth, and spreads 

 fertility and a charm over rugged nature. No 

 town, no group of towns, can apply this instru- 

 mentality to their fields without sensibly pro- 

 moting their beauty, thrift and value. The town 

 of Orange, where the proprietor resides, is a 

 happy illustration of what we have in view. 

 Gentlemen were present from that place, and tes- 

 tified touching its practical bearings among them, 

 where it is most known and has been most used. 

 Many of their best fields have been brought into 

 notice, in some sefase created, by the agency of 

 this machine. This may be known and read of 

 all, for, as the intelligent traveller glides through 

 the smiling village of South Orange, he every- 

 where sees evidences of fresh improvement ; he 

 sees large fields of rough land becoming smooth, 

 and new and beautiful fields breaking into view, 

 as by enchantment, and on inquiry he learns that 

 the Patent Stump Puller has had a hand in all 

 this advancement. 



DESTRUCTION OF WOOD. 



Dr. Hawks, in a late address l>efore the New 

 York Geographical Society, said : 



"Civilization uses a vast amount of wood, al- 

 though for many purposes it is being fast super- 

 seded ; but it is not the necessary use of wood 

 that is sweeping away the forests of the United 

 States so much as its ivanton dcstniction. We 

 should look to the consequences of this. Pales- 

 tine, once well wooded and cultivated like a 

 garden, is now a desert — the haunt of Bedouins ; 

 Greece, in her palmy days the land of laurel for- 

 ests, is now a desolate wast ; Persia and Babylon, 

 in the cradle of civilization, are now covered be- 

 neath the sand of deserts produced by the eradi- 

 cation of their forests. It is comparatively easy 

 to eradicate the forests of the North, as they are 

 of a gregarious order — one class succeeding an- 

 other ; but the tropical forests, composed of in- 

 numerable varieties, growing together in tlie most 

 democratic union and equality, are never eradi- 

 cated. Even in Hindostan, all its many millions 

 of population have never been able to conquer 

 the phocnix-life of its tropical vegetation. Forests 

 act as regulators, preserving snow and rain from 

 melting and evaporation, and pmducing a regular- 

 ity in the flow of the rivers draining them. W hen 

 they disappear, thunder storms l)ecome less fre- 

 quent and heavier, the snow melts in the first 

 warm days of spring, causing freshets, and in the 

 fall the rivers dry up and cease to be navigable. 

 These freshets and drouths also produce the mal- 

 aria, which is the scourge of Western bottom- 

 lands. Forests, though they arc first an obstacle 

 to civilization, soon become necessary to its con- 

 tinuance. Owr rivers, not having their sources 

 above the snow-line, are dependent on forests for 

 the supply of water, and it is essential to the 

 future prosperity of the country that they should 

 be preserved." 



