THE GENESEE FARMER. 



367 



mber. Isabellas were eatable by the first of Oc- 

 ber, but did not retain their refined sugar sweet- 

 ise after the middle of the month. We had no 

 ist here to kill the grapevine leaves until the 

 ght of the 6th of November; then snow fell two 

 ches, and the mercury went down to 22°; an 

 rnest, I take it, of a long boating season. 



Strawberry plants, set out in August and Sep- 

 mber, generally failed, owing to the paucity of 

 in. We have bad no short crops this season, if 

 e may except buckwheat, and this failure is due 



extreme dry weather. 



The sad depreciation in the currency is anything 



it a present misfortune to the farmer, as it makes 



shipping demand for most of his productions, 

 r en butter; and consequently raising the prices. 



The Waste of Manures in Cities. 



I have been reading in the "Miserables," Victor 

 ugo's very lively and instructive chapters on tie 

 wers of Paris. He quotes Liebig to show that 

 mcient Rome's cloaca absorbed all the well-being 



the Roman peasant;" that "when the Oatnpagna 



Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome 

 busted all Italy, and when sbe had put Italy in 

 ir cloaca, she poured in Sicily, tben Sardinia, 

 en Africa. With epigrammatic wit Hugo says, 

 his example Paris follows with all the stupidity 

 culiar to cities of genius." With her 140 miles 



sewers, Paris precipitates into the Seine and the 

 a, hundreds of millions in those simple elements 

 Inch she has gathered from the soil far and near, 

 ver to be returned to it. Thus he says, "the 

 jverness of man is such, that he prefers to throw 

 e hundred millions of the best guano in the world 

 to the gutter!" But he continues, '.' when drain- 

 er everywhere, with its double function, restoring 

 5 at it takes away, shall have replaced the sewer, 

 at simple impoverishing washing, then, being 

 mbined with data of a new social economy, the 

 oduct of the earth will be increased ten fold, and 

 e problem of misery will be wonderfully dimin- 

 led. In the meantime, Europe is ruining herself 

 ■ leakage and exhaustion." Thus far, the Chi- 

 se is the only nation that has from necessity been 

 mpelled to return to the earth all the elements of 

 e food consumed, in order that it may produce 

 fficient nutriment to subsist its immense popula- 

 >n. Edinburgh is, I believe, the only European 

 ;y that has commenced distributing its sewerage 



the surrounding country, as manure for both 

 ain and grass; and it is said that the experiment 

 a great success. How soon will the day come 

 hen what has long been a necessity in China, and 

 iw in Europe, the appropriation of sewerage as 

 anure, will also be a necessity to the United 

 ates? The city of New York alone, now daily 

 istroys the corn and cattle of a large district of 

 untry, every simple element of which goes into 

 e sewer, to be "in the deep bosom of the ocean 

 iried," never to be again quickened into vegeta- 

 e and animal life! 



Often has this deponent gone from the fetid ma- 

 ire streets of New York, sickened with the con- 

 led air and compound smells of a tainted atmos- 

 lere, to the gravelly soils of Staten Island, or the 

 ndy plains of Long Island, when, in the fresh and 

 imulating sea atmosphere, the arid soil alone cried 

 oud, for those elements of fertility which were 



the plague spot and bane of the great Babylon. I 

 then could but reflect, that Providence had designed 

 from the beginning, that those hungry silicious 

 plains should be the recipients of the wastings of 

 the great city ; the easy, grateful soil, being already 

 perfectly prepared and underdrained by nature's 

 hand, to need nothing but that which in the city 

 was a crying daily waste, a source of squalor and 

 disease. 



New York has her poor houses, her charitable 

 institutions, without stint. But metliinks the 

 crowning charitable institution is not that which 

 displays the finest architecture, or that which the 

 most comfortably feeds and lodges its eleemosyn- 

 ary inmates ; but that which usually employs them, 

 while it feeds them. I want to see on the under- 

 drained, bushy plains of Long Island, a vast mar- 

 ket, fr.uit, and flower garden, or gardens, manured 

 by the city wastings, sewerage, if you please, and 

 worked by the cities' poor: Such a consummation 

 would relieve pauperism of its bane, — idleness, its 

 demoralizing chronic helplessness — by a discipline 

 and practical daily training, that leads to self-reli- 

 ance and subsequent self-respect, and consequent 

 usefulness in the world. s, w. 



Waterloo, N. Y., Nov. 10, 1862. 



LANGUAGE OF FOWLS. 



Eds. Genesee Faemeb : By the term "language" 

 in reference to fowls, we do not mean sounds 

 which can be mutually understood, but that many 

 fowls have various sounds and voices adapted to 

 express their various passions, wants and feelings — 

 such as anger, fear, love, hatred, hunger, and the 

 like. All species are not equally eloquent : some 

 are copious and fluent, as in their utterance, while 

 others are confined to a few important sounds ; no 

 one fs quite mute, though some are silent. The 

 language of sounds is quite ancient, and like the 

 ancient mode of speech, of other bipeds, very 

 eliptical : little is said, but much is meant and un- 

 derstood. 



We shall confine our remarks to the domestic 

 fowls of our yards, which are most known, and 

 therefore best understood. 



No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such 

 a variety of expression and so copious a language 

 as common poultry. Take a chicken of" four or 

 five days old and hold it up to a window where 

 there are flies, and it will immediately seize its 

 prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but 

 if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its notes 

 become harsh and expressive of disapprobation 

 and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to 

 lay, she intimates the event by a joyous and easy, 

 soft note. Of all the occurrences of her life, that 

 of laying seems to be the most important; for no 

 sooner has a hen laid her egg, than she rushes forth 

 with a clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and 

 the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The 

 tumult is not confined to the family concerned, but 

 catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every 

 homestead within hearing, until at last the whole 

 neighborhood is in an uproar. As soon as sbe is a 

 mother, her new relation demands a new language: 

 she then runs clucking and scampering about, and 

 seems agitated as if possessed. The father of the 

 flock has also a considerable vocabulary ; and if a 



