16 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



of the air, and their union is Carbonic-acid ^as; the more important of the two, after all. f waa 

 the very substance which the leaves of a plant going to say that in a pretty long and intimate 

 /fee/ w;;y/i in tlie air where it is presented to them experience of a ratlier curious soil to deal with, 

 in its gaseous form, in which alone they can ab- and to which never did man,liorae, or implements, 

 sorb it: they do absorb it; and in their clever deny the epithet 'stiff,' — I too, like them, have 

 little liihuratory, they pick out the carbon and re- j had my own dumb reflections, and not the least 

 turn the oxygen ; just as our own lungs take up| emphatic of these have grown out of the every day 

 the oxygen and return the nitrogen. Multiply the, phenomena of mind acting pon mind. You tell 

 two surfiices of an oak-leaf by the number of; a man something, to-day, or express an opinion, 

 leaves on the tree, and you will ba able to form 'or assert a fact, about a" thing which he has per- 



Eome idea of the enormous surface, which the 

 plant annually presents to the atmosphere to carry 

 on this work of absorption. 



But the roots — what is tlieir use then? 



Examine them through a Microscope, and you 

 will see that, as the Leaves are adapted to inter- 

 course with Air, so the roots are adapted to 

 Water : not stagnant water : for the sponge rots 

 which is always saturated, and their myriad fibers 

 are each furnished at the end with a sponge, ca- 

 pable of rapid expansion and contraction — suited, 

 therefore, to a medium in which moisture should 

 be ever on the move, downward by gravitation, or 

 upward by capillary attraction. This is the true 

 condition of the soil demanded of the mechanical 

 department of husbandry. ' Pulverize your soil 

 deeply,' said Jethro TuU, who thoughtthat plants 

 lived upon fine particles of mould : and he said 

 rightly, but in so fnv as he said only half, and 

 thought that was all, he thought wrongly." 



FALL MANURING. 



"Decay is only slow combustion : and when you 

 are burying gi-eat cart-loads of carbonaceous man- 

 ure in the soil before winter, you are making a 

 hot-bed underground, which will raise the tem- 

 perature of the soil throughout the long reign of 

 Jack Frost, and preserve many a tender seed that 

 would otherwise perish : and herein lies the chief 

 and wise application of all carbonaceous or bulky 

 manure. Rightly, then, so far as their know- 

 ledge went, did our forefathers, who knew noth- 

 ing of Turnip culture, plow in their long manure 

 before winter : a poor practice at best, we say, to 

 put manure in immediate contact with a grain 

 crop, but not more poor than to apply to a green 

 spring-crop, under the burning sun of June, the 

 treasures of the Farm-yard whose spirit is exhaled 

 before the body is buried, and whose body is not 

 rotted time enough to afford its remnant of inor- 

 ganic food to the crop it is applied to." 



FARMING WITHOUT KNOWING HOW. 



" Wh>j do you think — why docs everybody think 

 — that he can farm without having learnt how; 

 that agriculture (if you like that word best) is an 

 exception to every uther human labor or pursuit, 

 a contradiction to all Natural Law, and will bring 

 a livelihood witliout study,cost or apprenticeship."' 



OPERATION OF "MIND UPON MIND." 



"Among the v irious experiences which the much 

 more social Agriculture of the last twenty years 

 has brouglit, (f)ra change has come over us in 

 that particular .since) there is none which has 

 struck me more than that part of its philosophy 

 which ctr.sisrs in the operation of mind wjwummt/. 

 Tliat of ' mind upon matter' is not a very new 

 subject : we see it every day — and hear of it too, 

 till it is something tiresome : just now we are on 

 a different theme, and a less trodden : ' mind 

 upon mind' is our point at present, and perhaps 



haps never noticed or never heard, before; he 

 smiles, starts, shakes his head, or delivers himself 

 in some other way, for the ways are various in 

 which men ' behave' (as the chemists call it) 

 under the infiltration of a new idea. Whatever 

 the mode may be, one thing you may be sure of, 

 that in the grunt, the smile, the laugh perhaps, in 

 fact whatever it may be that meets you, the atti- 

 tude of mind betokened is that of — dissent. lam 

 far from complaining of it : some of my best hands 

 have given me infinitely the most mental grave- 

 ling in this respect. But what I Jo complain of, 

 and want to know where to apply for remedy, 

 (since the Law tells us that for every Wrong 

 there lies one; — is that these same hard-headed 

 fellows, workmen, neighbors, friends, kind advi- 

 sers, or whatever other relation they may hold — 

 six, twelve or eighteen months afterward, coolly 

 come to me, and with all that air of profound 

 thought that becomes a man of reflective character, 

 down-calving as one may say wiih something in- 

 tensely wise, announce tome in new language of 

 their own, the very thing which I at such time 

 suffered a small martyrdom in the vaiu endeavor 

 to urge w^on them." 



Aside from the intrinsic value of the book, as 

 a teacher, we regard it as a valuable contribution 

 to the agricultural literature of the country, and 

 one of those books which will guadually lead the 

 farmer, sometimes, awaj' from the dust and toil of 

 his calling to commune with other minds, who 

 have, perhaps, taken a hig'ier and wider range of 

 the employment. 



"What THE Apple Man says in 1853." — Mr. N. 

 P. Morrison, of Somerville, informs us that he has 

 just received ten dollars and eight cents for one bar- 

 rel and 28 apples of the Ilubbardston variety. — 

 These apples were sold by the retailer at 50 to 75 

 cents a dozen. Mr. M. cultivates about eight acres 

 of land ; his fruit crop, this barren year, brought 

 him eight hundred and fifty dollars ! For 26 bush- 

 els of apples he received sixty dollars. For 136 

 barrels, hereceived/oMr hundred and eight dollars. 

 Fur strawberries and raspberries, one hundred dol- 

 ars. The balance, to make up the whole sum, 

 $850,00, was for cider apples, sold at 8 to 12 cents 

 a bushel, and for early windfalls sold in July ;:nd 

 August. Perhaps some of our young men will 

 come to the conclusion that the market for i,'<iod 

 fruit is not yet overstocked. 



^^ The value of the articles which hare patsed 

 over the Erie Canal the present year is estimated to 

 be ^39,626,362— being #5,2-12,443 more tluu the 

 value of the freights last year. 



