1836] 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



531 



when the minale siliceous particles become suffi- 

 ciently apparent. 



^V. B. — The obvious result?, morcly, of the ad- 

 dition oi" siliceous sands to musses, have been 

 brouo-ht under notice in the precediniz ;emarks. 

 Were the principle upon which the sand operates 

 satisliictorily determined, it would doubtless form 

 a valuable acquisition to ajTricullural science. 



A Cultivated Moor. — The Ibllowins is a slcetch 

 ofan attempt to cultivate a moor, dashed oi\ by a 

 hand, the productions of which can never be mis- 

 taken. The moral of this graphic picture is, that 

 there is a wrong as ivcll as a right v/ay of improv- 

 ing a moor. 



The Moor. — It was then ever so many miles 

 long, and ever so many miles abroad, and nobody 

 thought of guessintr how many miles round ; hut 

 some dozen years ago it was absolutely n)oasured 

 to a rood, by a land-louper of a surveyor — distri- 

 buted — drained — enclosed — utterly ruined forever. 

 No — not torever. Nature laughs to scorn acts oi' 

 parliament, and we predict that, in a quarter of n 

 century, she will resume the management of that 

 moor. We jejoice to hear that she is befiinning 

 already to take lots of it into her own hands. 

 Wheat has no business there — and should keep to 

 the carses. In sprinc she takes him by the braird 

 till he looks yellow in ihe face long before his time 

 — in summer, bj' the cuff of the neck till he lies 

 down on his back and rots in the rain — in autun)n, 

 by the ears, and rubs him aijainst the grain till he 

 expires, as fashionless as the wumle-siraes with 

 which he is interlaced — in winter, she shakes him 

 in the stook till he is left but a shadow, which 

 pigeons despise. See him in slack at Christinas, 

 and you pity the poor straw. Here and there bits 

 of bear or big2", and barley, she permits to flourish : 

 nor is she loath to see the flowers and shaws and 

 apples on the poor man's plant — the life-sustaining 

 potato — which none but political economists hate, 

 and all Christians love. She is not so sure about 

 turnips, but as they are a green crop, she leaves 

 thein to the care of the fly. But where are our 

 gowans gone? There they still are, in flocks 

 which no cultivation can scatter or eradicate — inex- 

 tinguishable by all the lime that was ever brought 

 unslokened from all the kilns that ever glowed — 

 by all the dung that was ever heaped, fresh and 

 fuming fi'om the Augean stables in the land. Yet 

 her heart burns within her to behold, even in the 

 midst of what she abhors, the large dew-loved 

 heads of clover whitening or reddenino-, or v/ith 

 their rival colors amicably intermingled, a new 

 birth, glorious in the place of reedy marish or fen, 

 where the cat's-paw nodded — and them, she will 

 retain into herself when once more she rejoices in 

 her Wilderness Res'ored, And Vv^ould we be so 

 barbarous as to seek to impede the progress of 

 improvement, and to render agriculture a dead let- 

 ter? We are not so barbarous — nor yet so savage. 

 We love civilized lile, of wfiich we have long been 

 one of the smallest, but sincerest ornaments. But 

 aorricullure, like education, has its bounds. It is, I 

 like it, a science, and woe to the country that en- 

 courages ail kinds of quacks. Cultivate a moor! \ 

 educate a boor! Fu'sf, understand the character ] 

 of clods and clodhoppers. Txt say nothino' now of I 

 the urbans and suburbans — a perilous people — yet l 

 of great capabilities; tor to discuss that question I 

 would lead us into lanes ; and as it is a long lane 

 tliat has never a turning, for the present we keep ! 



in the open air, and abstain from wynds. We 

 are no enenues to poor soils, far less to rich ones, 

 iljnorantly and stupidly called poor, winch under 

 proper treatment eifuse riches ; but to extract from 

 pau|)ers a return for the ex[)enditure squandered 

 b\' miserly greed on their reluctant bottoms cold 

 and bare, is the insanity oi' speculation, and such 

 schemes deserve being buried along with their 

 capital in quagmires. Lord! -howlhey — the quag- 

 mires— suck in dimg ! You say they don't suck it 

 in — well then, they spew it out — it evaporates — 

 and what is the worth of w^eeds ? Lime wliitens 

 a moss; that is true, but so does snow. Snow 

 melts — what becomes ol" lime no mortal knovv^s but 

 the povvheads— them it poisons, and ihey give up 

 the ghost. Drains are dug deep now-a-days — 

 and we respect Mr. Johnstone. So are gold mines. 

 But from gold mines that precious metal — at a 

 great expense, witness its price — is exterred ; in 

 drains that precious metal, witness wages, is inter- 

 red, and then it becomes squash. Stirks starve — 

 heifers are hove with windy nothing — with oxen 

 (i-ogs compete in bulk, with every p.rospect of a 

 successful issue; and on such pasturage where 

 would be the virility oi the bulls of Basham I 



arODE OF EXACTLY REPRESEXTING LEAVES- 



To tile Edilorof the Farmeis' Register. 



Petersburg, Nov. 28, 1836. 



Dear Sir, — In a note in the introductory part of 

 T'ilrs. Lincoln's Botany, there is a recipe for taking 

 ihe impressions of leaves. It is to smoke a sheer, 

 of oiled writing paper over a candle, until a sort of 

 unctuous itd{ is formed — to apply this ink to the 

 interior surface of the lealj and then to press this 

 inked surface on a clean sheet of thin letter paper. 

 I tried this- plan, and found it successful, but it was 

 tedious and troubles^ome — since one blackening of 

 a sheet would answer only for a very k\\ leaves, 

 and the repealed oiling of the paper jeopardized 

 one's dress. 



It occurred to me, that printer's ink would an- 

 swer the purpose. I procured a small quantity of 

 this article fiom the office of the Register, and had 

 two small dahs, as i call them, made of cotton, co- 

 vered with an old glove, the handle bemg a small 

 Vv^ooden thread-spool sewed in. "With this appara- 

 tus, I applied the ink to the leaf, and pressed it 

 with a book, and I found the impression exact and 

 beautiful. My next step in improvenient, was to 

 fasten two pieces of thick board together, by means 

 of leather hinges — a prin\itive printing press. 



A more convplete and elegant machine, however, 

 would be a mercb.ani's letter press — which, when 

 used in printing leaves, might be called tlie leaf 

 press. 



In towns, however, I agree with you, a print- 

 ing press would be the best, and ready to the hand. 

 By means of this machine, fifty leaves might be 

 printed at once, and by inking both sides of the 

 leaves, duplicate impressions might be made each 

 time — one of the upper, and the other of the un- 

 der side, vvfhich would maice the number of im- 

 pressions a hundred, and the same leaves from one 

 inking, might be printed a number of times; and 

 by re-inking, miyht be struck off "ad infinitum.'' 



This mode of delineating leaves is preferable to 

 any other, because it gives the very Jac simile of 

 nature — the veins, the outline, the very grain and 



