396 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept' 



Scotch agriculturist, recording what a surprising 

 increase of food for stock he has obtained by the 

 use of liiquid manure. His grain and mangold 

 crops excited general admiration, and on no former 

 occasion has he shown anything like them. The 

 wheats especially are magnificent, up-standing, 

 even in growth, large-eared, and so high that some 

 adventurers who started out to explore afield sown 

 with "Payne's Defiance" were at once shut out of 

 view by the waving and luxuriant mass of vegetation. 

 In the management of his Italian rye-grass, Mr. 

 Mechi's forming shows to the least advantage ; 

 but for this, as Mr. Caird very properly observed 

 after dinner, the dry climate of the eastern coun- 

 ties is somewhat responsible. In making the round 

 of his farm, Mr. Mechi delivered a succession of 

 short but very amusing and vigorous peripatetic 

 lectures on every important point connected with 

 agriculture. His visitiors were delighted with the 

 freshness, good humor, the volubility, and, in the 

 main, the soundi-ess of these expositions. They 

 certainly have a stamp about them which nobody 

 but ]\Iechi could give, and his field preachings on 

 agriculture are alone worth travelling a long dis- 

 tance to listen to. There was not time left before 

 dinner to examine the feeding-sheds, the stock, 

 and the general arrangement of the homestead, 

 but enough had been seen to satisfy tlie keenest 

 appetite for improved cultivation. Smart exercise 

 in the fresh air had now brought a large propor- 

 tion of the guests into a frame of body and mind 

 thoroughly calculated to do justice to the ample 

 provision which their liost had prepared for them. 

 In a spacious tent, erected for that purpose, they 

 sat down to the number of nearly- 300, and there 

 the evening was most agreeably terminated in that 

 round of toasts and speech-making which seems 

 an indispensable condition of festive meetings in 

 this country. 



SQUIRRELS m THE V/OODS. 



There are few things more pleasing than to lie 

 upon the grass on a sunny day in Summer, and 

 watch the squirrels in the trees al)ove you. Peer- 

 ing up, you will espy, on one of the tree stems, a 

 little brown monkoyfied-looking rat, with a sort of 

 rabbit's head, and a foxy tail as long as its body, 

 and curling over it, and ccce my lord squirrel ! 

 Down he comes, leaping from branch to branch, 

 clawing, racing so fast, and now he reaches the 

 turf and sits upon his hind legs, and looks this 

 way and that, and listens. Do not move, or he is 

 off; do not wink so much as as eyelid. "All 

 right ? " his merry brown eyes seem to ask. Yes, 

 all right ; for a nut drops from between his teeth 

 into his fore paws, and giving his mighty conse- 

 quential tail an extra curl, he makes ready for 

 breakfast. Tliat is another sight — the way in 

 which a squirrel deals with a nut. First of all he 

 shakes and rattles it, that he may be sure there is 

 something inside ; then he twirls it round and 

 round in his })aws, till he gets the narrow end up- 

 permost, for he knows tliat the upper end of the 

 shell is the thinnest ; then he begins to grate and 

 file till lie has wormed his way through, getting 

 noisier and noisier as the hole gets bigger ; and 

 then comes intervals of quiet, which means that 

 his teeth are in the kernel, and that he is eating 

 all within his reach ; for a squirrel never has pa- 

 tience to wait till the kernel is clean out ; he eats 

 by installments in the shell, and trust him for get- 



ting the whole of it ! Well, after the nut, he 

 will perhaps pick the bones of an apple, if there 

 be one within reach ; and when he has had his 

 fill he will wash his face with his paws, and his 

 paws with his fixce, and, feeling quite clean and 

 spruce and comfortable, he will roll over on the 

 turf, making funny little noises and giving queer 

 little jumps, and then away! up the next tree 

 stem, clawing, leaping, swinging, so fast, so fast, 

 — up and up, till your neck is out of joint with 

 watching him, and he is lost among the leaves. 



For the New England Farmer. 



THE DROUGHT IN NORTHERN 

 VERMONT. 



Mr. Editor : — The severity of the drought in 

 this vicinity, probably exceeds that of any other 

 year within the recollection of the oldest inhabi- 

 tants. Five years ago this summer was called the 

 extraordinary dry season, and every summer 

 since might very properly be termed a dry season, 

 but the drought this year by far exceeds that of 

 any other of the "dry seasons." Most of the 

 country north of the Winooski river to Canada 

 line has suffered more or less. In Lamoille Coun- 

 ty, not only the low land in the valleys, and the 

 farms of dry and sandy soil, have suffered, but hill 

 farms, and those that extend on to the sides of 

 the mountains — farms that arc naturally wet — 

 and were not injured by former droughts, have 

 been very much injured this summer. 



The farmers have not cut probably more than 

 half of the usual crop of hay, and the same may 

 be said of oats and potatoes ; and corn not much 

 better, though there may.be some fields that are 

 tolerable. There are many fields of most all kinds 

 of crops that are almost an entire failure. It 

 seems as though the "barren clods" could never 

 look green again. The pastures are "very short" 

 and very much crisped up, as are also the mead- 

 ows that have been mowed. Many of them look 

 as if they had been bleached. If there should come 

 sufficient rain, at this late hour, it would hardly 

 benefit very much any kind of croji ; even 230ta- 

 toes are considered "too far gone," to be much 

 benefited, though it would help grass land and 

 fall feed; us it is, stock find it rather close picking 

 to get their living now. 



The advance prices of farm produce in this vi 

 cinity, within a year or two, have encouraged 

 farmers to take hold with new energy ; but the 

 failure of their crops this year, causes some to 

 wear rather long faces. There has not been one 

 soaking rain here this summer, nothing but a 

 few slight showers. 



I will mention one singular phenomenon that 

 is happening to some of the potatoes in this vicin- 

 ity ; potatoes that were planted about the middle 

 of May, by the middle of August, bore new ones, 

 nearly half-grown, about as large as they would 

 be this year, owing to the drought ; but the curi- 

 osity is, the new ones have sprouted and come up. 

 I saw yesterday (the I7th) some with sprouts a 

 finger 's-length long, as they had got out of the 

 ground, though the old tops were gi'cen. Is it a 

 fi'cak of nature — an extra effort to "bring forth 

 and multiply?" Or might it not be the drought 

 stopped their growth, and after a shower the 

 warm weather caused them to sprout and grow ? 



Morrisville, Vt., Aug. 18, 1854. J. m. c. 



