1857. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



429 



MECHAinSM OF VITAL ACTICHS. | 



The following is from an article bj' O. W. Holmes, 

 in the lust number of the J^'orih Jiniericaii Rcvieiv : 



If the reader of this paper live another complete 

 year, his self-conscience principle will havemigrated 

 from its present tenement to another, the raw ma- 

 terials, even, of which are not as yet put together. 

 A portion of that body of his which is to be will 

 ripen in the corn of the next harvest. Another por- 

 tion of his future person he wi'l purchase, or others 

 will purchase for him, headed up in certain barrels 

 of potatoes. A third fraction is yet to be gathered 

 in a southern rice-field. The limbs with which he 

 is then to walk will be clad with tlesh borrowed from 

 the tenants of many stalls and pastures, now uncon- 

 scious of their doom. The very organs of speech 

 with which he is to talk so wisely, or plead so 

 eloquently, or preach so effectively, must first serve 

 his humbler brethren to bleat, to bellow, and for all 

 the varied utterances of bristled or feathered barn^ 

 yard life. His bones themselves are, to a great ex- 

 tent, in posse, and not in esse. A bag of phos- 

 phate of lime which he has ordered from Prof.Mapes 

 for his grounds, contains a large part of what is 

 to be his next year's skeleton. And, more than 

 all this, and by far the greater part of his body is 

 nothing after all but water ; the main substance of 

 his scattered members is to be looked for in the 

 reservoir, in the running streams, at the bottom of 

 the well, in the clouds that float over his head, or 

 diffused among them all. 



We need not wonder, in view of this perpetual 

 change of material, that the living body, as a whole, 

 resists decomposition. The striking picture drawn 

 by Cuvier, in his Introduction to the Comparative 

 Anatomy, in which the living loveliness of youthful 

 beauty is contrasted with the fearful changes which 

 a few hours will make in the lifeless form, loses its 

 apparent significance when we remember the neces- 

 sary consequence of the arrest of its interior move- 

 ments. The living body is like a city kept sweet 

 by drains running underground to every house, into 

 which the water that supplies the wants of each 

 household is constantly sweeping its refuse matters. 

 The dead body is the same city, with its drains 

 choked and its aqueducts dry. The individual 

 6ystem,like the mass of collective life that constitutes 

 a people, is continually undergoing interstitial de- 

 composition. If we take in a ton every twelvemonth, 

 in the shape of food, drink, and air, and get rid of 

 only a quarter ofit unchanged in our own substance, 

 we die ten times a year; not all of us at any one 

 time, but a portion of us at every moment. It is 

 a curious consequence of this, we may remark, by 

 the way, that if the refuse of any of our great cities 

 were properly economized, its population would eat 

 itself over and over again in the course of every 

 generation. We consume nothing;, 



the most honorable pursuit which the first man fol- 

 lowed when he was placed in the garden of Eden, 

 and commanded to "dress it and to keep it." It is 

 the pursuit which the best men of all ages have fol- 

 lowed ; which has numbered Socrates and Cincinna- 

 tus, and Burns and Lafayette, and Jefferson and 

 V^ashington. 



What pursuit can be more honorable than that 

 of cultivating the soil, ani drawing from nature's 

 vast resources those productions which support and 

 sustain life ? What vocation in life can compare 

 with it? Who need be ashamed or disgraced in 

 piU'Suing agriculture, unless he does it so improp- 

 erly as to bring it upon himself, not upon his pur- 

 suit? 



One cause, undoubtedly, which has a tendency 

 to place a low estimate upon the profession of agri- 

 culture, is the low standard of intelligence which 

 too frequently is the case, is considered competent 

 to pursue it successfully. But every year this 

 standard is being elevated, and it will not be long 

 before a thorough education will be considered as 

 indispensable to the farmer as it is to any of the 

 learned professions. When this is the case, when 

 the pursuit of agriculture is properly appreciated, 

 when intelligence is considered an indispensable 

 requisite to the pursuit, we shall not have that vast 

 train of young men annually leaving farm life and 

 embarking in the learned professions, or in com- 

 mercial pursuits, there- to lead lives harassed by 

 the most perplexing cares, where failure is too often 

 the result. 



STATURAL ENEMIES OF INSECTS. 



One of the most useful is the toad. He feeds 

 wholly on insects. Perhaps some reader may de- 

 mur to this, and cite the authority of a so-called 

 "Professor" and some of his "Institute" associates, 

 that "toads eat strawberries," and that, not satisfied 

 with a fair average of the crop, "they always pick 

 out the best." But our strawberry cultivators need 

 not feel any special alarm at the presence of the 

 toad in their grounds, as it was only the superior 

 berries that were produced by the application of 

 "tannic acid," that this animal has ever been accused 

 of eating. 



The toad feeds mostly at evening twilight, at 

 which time he hunts for his prey. He is not dainty, 

 but swallows bugs, grubs, and flies as they com.e in 

 his way, or as he chances to find them. There are 

 many insects which seldom go abroad by daylight — 

 such as various moths, the May-bug (Melolontha,) 

 and other beetles, and several species of insects, the 

 larv?e of which are called "cut-worms," &c. All 

 these are devoured by the toad, l-ater in the sea- 

 son he feeds on crickets and grasshoppers. As be- 



fore remarked, he is entirely harmless in reference 

 Our food is I to vegetation, and on the whole, is the most useful 

 like those everlasting pills that old pharmacopoeias of all animals, as an insect-destroj^er. His manner 

 tell of, heir-looms for the dura ilia of successive I of catching insects is such that even the most deli- 

 generations. But we change what we receive, first I cate plant is not injured by the act. His long tongue 



into our substance, then into waste matter, and we 

 have no evidence that any single portion of the 

 body resists decomposition longer during Hfe than 

 after death. Only, as that decays it is at once re- 

 moved, while the living state continues. 



Agriculture the most Honorable Pursuit. 

 —It is too generally the case that agriculture is 

 looked upon as a low pursuit. It is the highest, 



is thrust with unerring aim on the victim, who van- 

 ishes so suddenly that unless the observer pays close 

 attention, he can hardly describe the operation. 



The toad is particularly useful in gardens, where 

 poultry cannot be introduced on account of the in- 

 jury they would in various ways produce, although 

 they might destroy many insects. The toad neith- 

 er scratches the gtound nor feeds on the crops, and 

 his small size and trifling weight permit him to go 



