No. 3. 



Early Health. — St. John's Wort. — Great Milker. 



83 



Early Health. 



Were the genealogy of flimilios to be 

 traced, it would be commonly found that 

 those who occupy what are usually called, 

 by way of distinction, the highest and the 

 lowest grades in society, run out after two 

 or three generations. Among the very poor, 

 mortality is greatest below the age of five 

 years. Among the wealthy, skill and appli- 

 ances preserve their offspring through the 

 years of childhood, to perish between the 

 ages of fifteen and twenty-five, just as the 

 hopes and prospects of life are dawning 

 upon them. Tiie lineage of the poorest 

 comes to a termination by poverty and 

 wretchedness; that of the richest goes off 

 in chronic and hereditary distempers, gout, 

 apoplexy, and especially, among females, by 

 consumption. Both are replenished from 

 the middling classes of society, who owe 

 their vigor and the perpetuation of their 

 families, r;ither to the happy fortune of being 

 compelled to labour, to be out much in the 

 open air, and to incur what they call expo- 

 sures and hardships, than to any knowledge 

 of those laws which they ignorantly observe, 

 but whose observance, is yet generously re- 

 warded. 



About seven millions, or one half of the 

 free white population of the United States, 

 are under eighteen years of age. Could we 

 allow to these only an average period of 

 twenty-four or five years, after having 

 reached majority, how important to the 

 country would be their condition as to 

 health and strength ! How much more im- 

 portant, yet how much less regarded, than 

 if they were an army of seven millions of 

 men! And what significancy and impres- 

 siveness does it give to the fact, that half of 

 mankind die before reaching the age of 

 twenty years. The amount of individual, 

 domestic, social and public interests, de- 

 pendent upon the physical well-being of 

 tliis multitude, cannot be appreciated by any 

 finite mind. It is too vast for our compre- 

 hension. We can hardly conceive of the 

 latent power which exists even in a single 

 healthy, well-formed infant. What a maga- 

 zine of forces lies pent up within the narrow 

 limits of its frame ! What endurance, ce- 

 lerity, energy, achievement ! As a mere 

 material agent, a physical machine, there is 

 something altnost sublime in the idea of its 

 hidden capacities and might. Who, with- 

 out the evidence of observation and history, 

 would be so credulous as to believe, that, in 

 the tiny, flaccid arms of a group of infant 

 children, there were concealed such ener- 

 gies as could turn a granite quarry into the 

 dwellings and temples of a city, or convert 



a forest into ships, or a wilderness into a 

 garden, — or almost turn the earth inside out 

 to bring up its deep-deposited treasures for 

 human comfort or embellishment! Yet we 

 know that these hapless beings are endowed 

 with innate forces which render such achieve- 

 ments possible and practicable, and that du- 

 ring the period of a short life, they can pre- 

 pare bounties and blessedness for continents 

 and centuries. — Common School Journal. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 St. John's Wort. 



Mr. Editor, — It is some time since I had 

 intended to invite the attention of your read- 

 ers to the disappearance of a well known 

 plant from our fields, the St. John's Wort, 

 {Hypericum.) A few years since, the clo- 

 ver fields of the second year, were overrun 

 with this weed, but for the last two years, I 

 have not met with a single plant, though I 

 have looked for it with some attention, where- 

 ever it was likely to be found, through the 

 neighbouring counties in this State, and New 

 Jersey. It is a subject of some interest to 

 the curious in such matters, to know whe- 

 ther there is a general extinction of this 

 plant, and also, whether a similar determi- 

 nation has been observed with respect to 

 others. The Sycamore tree seems to be 

 threatened with some exterminating dis- 

 ease ; and the geologists inform us of many 

 species of animals, as well as vegetables, 

 which have become extinct. These phe- 

 nomena have been generally attributed to 

 the various convulsions of the earth's sur- 

 face ; but it may be worth the attention of 

 those who have leisure and opportunity for 

 the inquiry, to endeavour to ascertain, whe- 

 ther it may not be a general law of nature, 

 that vegetables, and perhaps animals too, 

 become extinct after certain series of years. 

 Yours, &c., S. D. Ingham. 



Great Spring, Sept. 25th, 1843. 



Great Milker. — A Durham cow, owned 

 by Cyrus P. Smith, Brooklyn, N. Y., gave 

 from 32 to 34 quarts of milk daily, for twenty 

 days, commencing seven days after calving. 

 This was in September. For three months 

 in succession, she gave not less than 32 

 quarts per day. For ten months she gave 

 an average of 27 quarts per day. Besides 

 hay and grass in their season, she was fed 

 on ground corn and oats, meal, ship-stuff and 

 carrots, sugar beets and potatoes ; changing 

 the feed once a week, as it was found that 

 on anyone course of feed more than a week, 

 the quantity of milk diminished, and by a 

 change it increased. 



