262 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



June 





Mm' 



For the New England Farmer. 



LETTER FROM MR. FRENCH. 



A Walk over the Farm— Protection of Vines in Winter— Win- 

 ter-Killing of Trees— Draining a Barn-Cellar— Draining 

 with Tiies— Birde and Flowers. 



Exeter, JV. K, Jipril 6, 1857. 

 My Dear Brown : — I had fondly hoped that 

 at about this time I might have the pleasure of a 

 walk with you over my homestead, and a talk 

 about the many little matters that meet the eye, 

 and afford subject for conversation, in a stroll over 

 the farm in the spring time. But "the cares of the 

 world," in the form of long and wearisome terms of 

 the courts, have for weeks kept me away from my 

 home ; and after a glance of a single day, at what 

 the winter has been doing for me, my labors must 

 be resumed. But one sees a great deal in a single 

 day, and the memory of pleasant scenes, like the 

 light-pictures of friends, which are painted in an 

 instant by the daguerreotype, may be carried away 

 with us, and contemplated at our leisure. And so, 

 the pleasures of our home, or of a moment, even, 

 may be repeated, like reflections of the person in 

 opposite mirrors, till one is multiplied into many. 

 Time is measured only by consciousness. A dream- 

 less sleep, though for twenty years, like Rip Van 

 Winkle's, is to the sleeper only an instant ; while 

 the short dream of Shakespeare's Richard, bririgiiig 

 before him in rapid review the ghosts of his mur- 

 dered victims, is a life-time of remorse and terror, 

 and he cries out, 



"My conscience hath a thousand several tongue^ 

 And every tongue brings in a several tale, 

 And every tale condemns me for a villain. 

 All several sins, all used in each degree, 

 Throng to the bar, crying all— guilty ! guilty ! 

 I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, 

 And, if I die, no soul will pity me." 



The pleasure of life depends far less on tlie pres- 

 ent than on the past and future. As in a star-lit 

 night, only the points of light attract our notice, in 

 all the broad expanse of the heavens, so memory 

 fixes her gaze upon the scattered "lights of other 

 days," the moments of joy or of sorrow burnt into 

 the soul, while hope bends earnestly forward, wait- 

 ing amid the clouds and darkness of midnight, for 

 the dawning of the future light. 



This bright spring morning I have upon my farm ; 

 1 will imagine you here with me, and we, with our 

 long boots on, ready for a ramble over the fifty 

 acres, which are more to me than a whole prairie of 

 government land at the West. I shall have to do 

 most of the talking. It is a great gift to talk well, 

 though a more rare accomplishment to listen well. 

 Perhaps you will listen better than usual, this 

 time! There, look at those honeysuckles and 

 climbing roses, taken down from the pillars and 

 corners of the house last autumn, laid close to the 

 wall, and covered with white pine boughs. It is 

 hardly time yet to uncover them for the season, 

 but we may examine them. Not the smallest twig 



has suffered by the winter, although the thermom- 

 eter on that post went thirty-six degrees below ze- 

 ro. All the mats that can be wrapped round a 

 vine of any kmd, are not worth half so much for 

 protection, as a few pine bushes, but there is a 

 great deal in laying the vines down upon the warm 

 bosom of mother earth. The roses on the terrace, 

 entirely exposed to "the peUings of the pitiless 

 storm," have suffered no more than usual, although 

 the cold has been unusually intense. The truth is, 

 that it is not the cold merely that winter-kills. It 

 is the want of preparation for it. A man who goes 

 from a hot room into the winter air may take cold 

 in a few moments, while he might, with little dan- 

 ger, have been exposed to the same atmosphere 

 had he not been previously over-heated. That 

 may do for illustration, but that is not exactly the 

 solution of the mystery ; it is not intense cold, 

 merely, nor is it sudden change merely from heat 

 to cold, that explains winter-killing. It is not a 

 mechanical rupture of the sap vessels by the expan- 

 sion of the sap by crystalization in freezing. That 

 may account for frost cracks, but not for the worse 

 injury in question. Trees are winter-killed by a 

 chemical change of the sap, which occurs by the ef- 

 fect of the early frosts, I think, which find the sap 

 imperfectly elaborated, and usually on sandy, but 

 not dry soil, where the trees grow late, or on in- 

 sufficiently drained land of any kind. 



I have had a sad experience with regard to winter- 

 killing. I did not ascertain till I had worked this farm 

 some years, how near to the surface the water is ; 

 but it is no new thing for a man not to learn how 

 to five till his life has been far spent. 



Here are some two or three acres of grass, sowed, 

 a part on the 25th of last July, and a part on the 

 17th of August, and there is another acre sowed on 

 the 4th of September last, with grass seed. It was 

 all mowed last year, and immediately after haying, 

 plowed with a double plow, harrowed with the 

 good old horse Olympus, alone, covered with a 

 good dressing of compost, with fifty bushels of 

 leached ashes added, and again harrowed and 

 rolled. You see it looks green and even, and is 

 not winter-killed. The clover sowed in August, 

 has come out of the snow covering green and live- 

 ly. I sowed none on the last acre, for it usually 

 winter-kills if sowed as late as September. I sowed 

 turnip seed with the grass, but the land was not 

 dry enough for a good crop, though I gathered 

 more than a hundred bushels, at no cost but for the 

 seed. Turnips sowed on the dryest part of the 

 and, on the 17th of August, attained a fair size. 



And there is an outlet of one of my tile drains. 

 You know draining with tiles is my particular weak- 

 ness, just now. You see how the water pours out 

 there. It has not ceased a moment to run as much 

 as would half fill a two inch tile, since it was laid. 

 The main object in view was to dry my barn eel- 



