NO. 1?. 



THE FARMERS CABINET. 



189 



War tjpon Locusts. — Accordingr to letters 

 from Aleppo, the country in that neighbour- 

 hood had been ravaired by locusts which de- 

 scended in clouds upon tlio earth and con- 

 sumed its vegetation. Il)ral)im Pacha called 

 out the whole population to do battle against 

 these armies of insects, and went himself at 

 the head of 25,000 men to the plact; most in- 

 fested. The people were marshalled in sev- 

 enty-two divisions, one of which in thirty- 

 two days collected a heap of locusts large 

 enough to load twenty horses. 



Fertility of Michigan. — A letter in a 

 western paper gives some instances of the 

 fertility of Michigan. A settler in the au- 

 tumn of 1831, spent 10 days work in clearing 

 the underbrush from 20 acres of oak opening, 

 and 20 days in ploughing and harrowing in 

 20 bushels of wheat. The next summer he 

 harvested 600 bushels from the field by 

 measurement. Last autumn, another sowed 

 4 acres of timbered land, a diflerent soil, and 

 this summer harvested from it 208 bushels 

 or wheat. These however are extraordinary 

 crops. 



TIic Iliisbandinaii. 



There is one prevailing error among this 

 class of society which ought to be eradicated 

 and destroyed — it is more fatal to the busi- 

 ness of agriculture than the growth of Cana- 

 da thistles, or the destruction of May frosts 

 — we mean the neglected education of the 

 farmer's children. It is frequently remarked 

 that education is of little use to the farmer ; 

 a very little science will do for him. Great 

 knowledge is only beneficial in the profes- 

 sional man. Expressions of this sort are 

 founded upon a false estimate of one of the 

 most useful and elevated professions of life. 



If the habitual business of the cultivator 

 does not afford the mental powers a field for 

 their most extended exercise, we know not 

 where to look for such a field. The study of 

 agriculture unites to the theory of science 

 the very essential material of its practical 

 parts. It makes the student experimentally 

 and truly learned. 



Nearly every thing that is useful in our 

 pilgrimage through life is drawn from the 

 earth. The main use of science is to explore 

 the minutiar; of nature, to fathom its secret 

 caverns, and to bring forth the hidden pos- 

 sessions of the earth into comprehensible 

 identity. — Where then is the occupation that 

 so richly furnishes a perpetual supply of 

 mental food as that of agriculture. In the 

 constant exercises and every day labor of the 

 farmer the business of his science is pro- 

 gressing, if his intellect has been set right 

 in the education of his youth. The theory 



is all essential, for this constitutes the im- 

 plement by which he is to prosecute the 

 study of nature to its practical utility. 



A man cannot go forth upon the land with 

 any good degree of promise in scientific ex- 

 periment, witiiout the light of pant experi- 

 ence upon his path way, and this he can 

 only obtain by a passage though the literary 

 institutions of the country, where the results 

 of the labors of the learned for ages are col- 

 lected together and made accessible to the 

 student. To attempt a prosecution of the 

 sciences independent of the past experience, 

 as we sometimes incline to consider our- 

 selves, would be v^in. — There is scarcely a 

 valuable discovery of modern times but has 

 borrowed something of its proportions or 

 utility from the mind of antiquity. 



That the farmer by a scientific cultivation 

 of his land, can increase to a very great ex- 

 tent its productions, there does not exist a 

 rational doubt. And that the time is coming 

 when there will be actual necessity for this 

 increase of production, there is every ap- 

 pearance. It is therefore not only wise and 

 expedient to commence or rather carry on 

 now, but it is a high duty which is owed 

 already to posterity, in consideration of all 

 the blessings which past ages have be- 

 queathed to us. 



Permit us, therefore, in our humble way, 

 to impress upon the minds of the farmers the 

 very great usefulness of education to their 

 children. Give your sons and daughters not 

 the less education because you design them 

 for rural life and agricultural pursuit. If you 

 are able, educate them — they will find abun- 

 dant employment for all their science though 

 their farms be located in the deep wilderness 

 of the west; though they be cast amid bar- 

 ren rocks and sterile sand plains, science will 

 aid them there. 



N ot a blade of grass nor spear of grain but 

 will grow better under the cultivation of in- 

 tellectual care. Not a flower but will show 

 beauties to the eye of science, which the 

 vulgar world knows not of. — Not a vine but 

 rears finer and produces more where educated 

 hands superintend its growth. In short, all 

 nature is beautified, improved and bettered, 

 where the cultivator is no stranger to its pro- 

 perties and the science of its.developement. 



P'armers, give your children education. It 

 is the only earthly inheritance you can be- 

 queath them that is beyond the reach of acci- 

 dent. All other human property is constantly 

 changing and transitory. — Science is not 

 transterable — not like the mutability of 

 other good, negotiable ; it is firm and un- 

 shaken by human vicissitude. It will be the 

 enduring companion of your children through 

 life — it will support them in all the afllic- 

 tions of Providential chastisement, and pre- 



