1857. 



NEW ENGLAND FAEMEK. 



431 



interests are no greater than those of any in the 

 community. 



His love for the cultivation of the earth, to make 

 her prolific and generous to man, and more than 

 repay him for his labors, amounts to a passion, so 

 that his experiments, his practical teachings, and 

 his -writings, have already done much good, and 

 will continue to, long after he is gathered into the 

 great harvest. Few men have continued faithful 

 and active so long in any cause, as Col. Wilder has 

 in the one which has received so large a share of 

 his personal attention ; and fewer still have pursued 

 a cause with such ardor, constancy and devotion. 

 No discouragements — and they have sometimes been 

 impending and gloomy — no personal inconvenience, 

 faltering of others, or lack of means, has turned 

 him from the course marked out, until effort has 

 been crowned with success. 



How strange it is, that so few persons make 

 agriculture a study, and its labors the profession of 

 life ; that so few look into the physiology of ani- 

 mals and plants, the effect of the varied seasons on 

 vegetation, aeration, or airing of the soil, the hab- 

 its and noxious or beneficial influence of insects, 

 the effect of manures, the comparative value of 

 grasses and grains, and many other topics of the 

 first importance to the world. There must be 

 something radically wrong in the common modes 

 of conducting agricultural business, when so many 

 forsake it for new and untried schemes, and so few 

 find those charms in it which Virgil and Homer and 

 TuU and Loudon and Colman have set forth in at- 

 tractive and sometimes glowing words. Col. W. 

 has often spoken of this want of desire for rural 

 life, and has steadily aimed to indoctrinate the young 

 with a taste for the calm and steady employment 

 of horticultural or agricultural art. His own suc- 

 cess, and the instances which he is able to cite, af- 

 ford ample evidence that such pursuits are more 

 profitable than any other, if we take a large num- 

 ber of each into the account. Massachusetts has 

 other worthy sons engaged in this productive art, 

 whose names stand bright in her history, and whose 

 character and effort would be an ornament and 

 blessing to any age. May our young men imitate 

 their examples, and qualify themselves to make 

 good their places. 



Flesh Eating and Vegetable Eatlxg.— To 

 consider man anatomically, he is decidedly a vege- 

 table eating animal. He is constructed like no 

 flesh eating animal, but like all vegetable eating 

 animals. He has not- any claws like the lion, the 

 tiger or the cat, but his teeth are short and smooth, 

 like those of the horse, cow, and the fruit eating 

 animals; and his hand is evidently intended to 

 pluck the fruit, not to seize his fellow animals. 

 What animal does man most resemble in every 

 respect? The ape tribes; frugiverous animals. 

 Doves and sheep by being fed on animal food, (and 

 they may be, as he has fully proved,) will come to 



refuse their natural food ; thus it has been with 

 man. On the contrary, even cats may be brought 

 up to live on vegetable food so that they will not 

 touch any sort of flesh, and be quite vigorous and 

 sleek. Such cats will kill their natural prey just 

 as other cats, but will refuse them as food. 



Man is naturally a vegetable eating animal ; how 

 then could he possibly be injured by abstinence 

 from flesh ? A man, by way of experiment, was 

 made to live entirely on animal food; after having 

 persevered ten days, symptoms of incipient putre- 

 faction began to manifest themselves. 



Dr. Lamb, of London, has lived for the last 

 thirty years on a diet of vegetable f(5od. He com- 

 menced when he was about fifty years of age, so 

 he is now about eighty, rather more I believe, and 

 is still healthy and vigorous. The writer of the 

 Oriental Manual mentions that he has seen com- 

 pound fracture of the skull among them, yet the 

 patient to be at his work as if nothing had ailed 

 him, at the end of three days. How different is 

 it with bur flesh eating, porter-swilling London 

 brewers ! a scratch is almost death to them. — 

 Flowers and Fruits, by J. E. Duncan. 



For the New England Fanner. 



HAIR SNAKES. 



Mr. Editor : — Having a good, a very good opin- 

 ion of the JVew England Farmer, it is not often I 

 let it pass without a careful inspection of its con- 

 tents. My attention was somewhat arrested, in- 

 deed I may say brought to a stand, on reading a 

 passage found in an article on hair snakes, written 

 by Mr. Wellington Rose, and published in the Far- 

 mer, in the issue of the 20th of last June. On the 

 subject of the controversy, (if there be any,) of the 

 origin of these little reptiles, I have nothing to say, 

 but wish to call attention to the case of the man 

 who is said to have passed one from the urinary 

 bladder, through the urethra. Nor shall I dispute 

 the fact that he did so, for there are more things 

 in heaven and on earth than our philosophy has 

 dreamed of. But the way it got there. It seems 

 the physician?, and I sujjpose Mr. Rose, were 

 well convinced that the hair that became vivified, 

 found its peculiar place of incubation by being 

 swallowed, and whether it became animated while 

 in the stomach, or during its journey to the blad- 

 der, or while in that receptacle, is not stated, nor 

 is, perhaps, material. Eut I do wish that Mr. Rose, 

 or yourself, or some of your correspondents, would 

 tell us by what means, or by what vessel, or set of 

 vessels, the thing made its way from the stomach 

 to the bladder. It appears to me that if such are 

 the facts, and no mistake, it presents new and unex- 

 plored fields in anatomy and physiology, that are 

 certainly worthy of investigation. If a satisfacto- 

 ry explanation can be given, it will assuredly throw 

 great light on some subjects, hitherto considered 

 extremely dark. Alfred Pixley. 



Enosbiirgh Falls, 1807. 



(J^A cow that runs almost entirely to milk, will 

 grow poorer, rather than otherwise, in good pas- 

 ture. She will require more water and grass. — 

 Her rich food will be almost entirely absorbed in 

 the production of milk. She will be likely, too, to 

 be short Hved. 



