1S57. 



NEW ENGLAND FAEMER. 



413 



ner, I see no person •without his bottle of wine ; 

 usually of some kind not stronger than good cider. 

 The lady who takes her lunch alone, drinks her 

 half-bottle of claret or Chablis ; and I must say, it 

 seems to my mind a far more ladylike drink than 

 the ever present beer and porter which I saw every- 

 where in England. I approve of conforming to 

 the habits of the Romans, generally, at Rome ; but 

 as to taking a bottle of porter with my dinner, I 

 could not do it, even at the risk of outraging the 

 institutions of the country by the omission. 



A small glass of brandy added to the after-din- 

 ner cup of coffee, is the almost universal custom at 

 the public places here, in Paris, but on trial, I find 

 that my Puritanical taste revolts at the mixture. 

 Everybody is in the streets in Paris in the evening, 

 and if there were any intemperance one might 

 probably discover it, but I have been assured by 

 those who have been long lookers-on here, that it 

 is very rare to see any person under the influence 

 of spirituous liquors. 



I do not believe there is in the world a parallel 

 for the brutish habits of drinking which prevail 

 with us. An American walks up to the bar, and 

 pours a glass of brandy down his throat as if it 

 were an emetic, or a dose of hemlock to which he 

 had been sentenced. A Frenchman orders his 

 wine, his newspaper, his bread and butter, and 

 strawberries, and sits an hour at his breakfast, tak- 

 ing rational, solid comfort. Even John Bull takes 

 time to dispose of his bottle of porter and his mut- 

 ton-chop, grumbling, of course, about the weather 

 or the cooking, for John cannot help grumbling al- 

 ways about something, though you may readily see 

 that it does not wear off his flesh. Neal Dow is 

 trying the temperance experiment in England. 

 How he will succeed is uncertain. Everybody drinks 

 beer there, from the youngest to the oldest. 1 have 

 eat and watched the women and children drink at 

 the ale-houses, and to me it seems that a reform 

 must be productive of great good there. The poor 

 laborer, who gets but two dollars and a half a week 

 for his labor, and boards himself, can ill afford his 

 daily quart of beer, but he always has it, at some 

 rate or other. Even the chambermaid, in her con- 

 tract of service, stipulates for her pint of beer per 

 day, and generally drinks a quart. This matter of 

 beer-drinking is an important item, when we come 

 to compare the prices of labor in England and the 

 United States, for no inconsiderable share of an 

 English laborer's wages goes for beer, in one way or 

 another. I believe that I have already alluded in a 

 former letter to the great disparity of the wages of 

 field labor in the two countries. I shall be able to 

 give an accurate statement on that point, in a future 

 communication. 



I was present a few days since at the trial of a 

 sort of steam plow, or digging machine, the inven- 

 tion of a Frenchman, which it seems to me may 



prove of some value, when perfected, to American 

 agriculture. The engine is a locomotive of three- 

 horse power, it was said, though it seemed to me 

 much greater. It was mounted on four broad 

 wheels, and the digging apparatus was attached to 

 it, digging behind the engine, which slowly moved 

 along like a railway engine. The diggers were in 

 pairs — I think some eight pairs — attached to severa^ 

 crooked axles, and not made fast to one cylinder, 

 like the American machine of which I have read. 

 Each pair of diggers struck into the ground in suc- 

 cession, to the depth of eight or ten inches, fork- 

 ing it up very light and even. It was at work when 

 I saw it on a piece of land that had been repeated- 

 ly dug over by it, land for agriculture being rather 

 scarce here in Paris, where it was exhibited. I 

 think the great difficulty in working machines 

 for such purposes, has heretofore been, that they 

 clogged badly. I should think this might be free 

 from this objection. 



The inventor, who was present, had no knowl- 

 edge of English, and my knowledge of French was 

 not sufficient to enable me to converse upon a sub- 

 ject so technical as this. I shall endeavor to pro- 

 cure a description and drawing of the machine as 

 soon as it is published. No patent has yet been 

 granted upon it, and probably no accurate descrip- 

 tion can yet be obtained. It occurred to me that 

 if the engine was really only of three-horse power, 

 we might work a similar machine anywhere in New 

 England with oxen. This machine dug a breadth 

 of about four and a half feet at once, leaving the 

 land in the condition of soil well dug over with a 

 fork. The engine turned at the end, but took rath- 

 er a wide sweep, so that it would hardly do for back 

 furrowing. 



Since writing the foregoing, 1 have spent half a 

 day in going from place to place, for some drawing 

 or description of the digging machine I have men- 

 tioned, but as no patent has been granted. It is im- 

 possible at present to get any further particulars 

 than I have furnished from a hasty inspection. The 

 Americans are far ahead of any other country yet 

 in the perfection of their farming utensils, espe- 

 cially their small tools. Everywhere in France I 

 see the women spreading hay with a wooden fork, 

 and the rakes they use are as heavy as four of ours. 

 Tbey have, by the way, a strange fashion of tying 

 their hay all in bundles of about twelve pounds, in 

 the field. All the hay is thus parcelled. 



At a meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society 

 in London, last week, a paper was read on horse- 

 powers, and it was stated that the power was 

 entirely practicable, and had been used in America. 

 It was introduced as an American invention, but as 

 one not much known in England. I saw at once that 

 it was the common horse-power, in use at our rail- 

 way stations, in which the horse walks on an end- 

 less platform ; and being called on by the presiding 



