DEVOTED TO AGRlCUIiTURII AND ITS KINDBfUD ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. VII. 



BOSTON, DECEMBER, 1855. 



NO. 12. 



JOEL NOURSE, Proprietor, 

 Office.. ..QuiNCT Hall. 



SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 

 HENRY F. FRENCH, J Editors. 



CALENDAR FOR DECEMBER. 



"Hoary, and dim, and bare, and shivering. 

 Like a poor almsman comes the aged Year, 

 What kind 'God save you all, good gentlefolks !' 

 Heap on fresh fuel, make a blazing fire. 

 Bring out the cup of kindness, spread the board, 

 And gladden Winter with our cheerfulness ! 

 Welcome! To you, and yours, and all ! All health !" 

 Lay of a Twelvemonth. 



ECEMBER closes the 

 circle of the Months 

 — each has appear- 

 ed in its turn, bring- 

 ing its peculiar ap- 

 ])earances, and in- 

 fluences, and appro- 

 priate duties, — each 

 in its own way car- 

 rying forward the 

 great work of re- 

 production, to sustain the 

 ' teeming population of the 

 i.uui; and though so different in 

 their character, they are equally es- 

 sential in their relation to the whole, 

 haraig a mutual office to perform 

 which must fail without a perfect 

 union and harmony of purpose. 



But the change is striking. The 

 green meadows and leaves were fol- 

 lowed by our gorgeous autumnal fo- 

 liage, with its innumerable tints gleaming in the 

 sun, and the thousand varying hues of the low 

 shrubbery, the darker red and purple, or the bright- 

 er orange of the shrubs under the walls and fences, 

 or scattered among the undergrowth of the forest. 

 And still another change has come ; all these, late 

 so beautiful, have disappeared. The noble forest is 

 stripped of its summer dress, and its showy, yet 

 fading, autumnal vestment, and stands bare in stern 

 grandeur, indifferent to all the assaults of Winter. 

 The graceful elm or drooping willow, the noble oak 

 and ash and the sj-mmetrical maple, have all yield- 

 ed to the common law — have cast their no longer 



useful leaves, and now stand unincumbered to resist 

 the shocks of northern blasts, or to reject the accu- 

 mulating snows which would otherwise rest upon 

 and crush them to the earth. "Now, denuded of their 

 gay attire, they spread forth their thousand branches 

 against the gray sky, and present as endless a vari- 

 ety of form and feature for study and observation, 

 as they did when dressed in all the flaunting fash- 

 ions of midsummer. Singly, the fruit trees, as trees, 

 have little beauty — but clustering in the orchard, 

 they partially atone for the desolation around tliem, 

 and prevent the whole landscape from being blank. 

 On a closer examination, their bloom-buds, which 

 the late leaves of autumn, had concealed from the 

 \iew, stand confessed, upon the otherwise bare 

 branches, and, dressed, in their patent Aviud-and- 

 water-proof coats, brave tlie utmost severity of the 

 season, — their hard unpromising outsides, com- 

 pared with the forms of beauty which they contain, 

 reminding us of their friends, the butterflies, when 

 in the chrysalis state." Now the fields are brown 

 and sere, the hills are deserted of oxen and sheep 

 and milch-kine, and look rust}- and dull and forsak- 

 en. Now the low meadows reveal by their bright 

 red leaves and stems, the cranberry patches dotted 

 here and there through their whole extent, and 

 giving those usually disagreeable grounds an attrac- 

 tiveness which they do not possess at any other pe- 

 riod of the year. 



Then The Garden, blank and dreary and dis- 

 mal as the landscape generally is. The Garden, 

 must not be forgotten, for Nature does not forget 

 it. "Though the gardener can find little to do in it, 

 she is ever at work there, and ever with a Mise 

 hand, and graceful as wise. The wintry winds of 

 November having shaken down the last lingering 

 leaves from the trees, the final labor of the garden- 

 er Avas employed in making all trim and clean ; in 

 turning up the dark earth, to give it air ; pruning 

 off the suijerfluous produce of summer, and gatli- 

 ering away the worn-out atlire that the perennial 

 flowers leave behind tlieni, when they sink into the 

 earth to seek their winter home." In the garden 



