450 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



fore daring several years past, obtained so good 

 grass the first year after seeding ; and T attribute 

 the cause entitely to the fact of seeding in the fall. 



It is perfectly reasonable to suppose, that seed 

 sown in the fall would be more likely to do well, 

 than if sown in the spring, because it is well known 

 that grass-seed self-sown or deposited by grass left 

 standing, almost always catches and grows better, 

 than that sown in the spring. The main reason 

 why it does not succeed when sown with oats in 

 the spring is because it cannot withstand the dry 

 weather which we usually have during the sum- 

 mer. Where it can be sown very early, as for in- 

 stance, with winter wheat, its chances for success 

 are greater; but, even then, I should prefer to 

 seed in the fall. 



When sown in the fall, it should be sown in 

 September, or before the fall rains commence, so 

 that it may get sufficiently started to withstand 

 the winter. 



That which I sowed in the fall was sown on 

 stubble, without any dragging ; nor do I think it 

 needs any, for it came up very thick and nice. 

 N. M. Carpenter. 

 Ellington, N. Y., August, 1854:. 



Rural New-Yorker. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER ON TREES. 



Every one who has read the life of Sir Walter 

 Scott, knows his love of trees. lie used to say 

 that of all his compositions, he was most proud of 

 his compositions to make trees grow. There is yet 

 at East-Hampton, flourishing in a liearty age, an 

 orchard set out by the hands of my fother. And 

 we have heard him say that after an absence from 

 home, the first impulse, after greeting his own 

 faxnily, was to go out and examine each tree in 

 his orchard, from root to top. No man ever plant 

 ed a tree or loved one, but knows how to sympa- 

 thize with this feeling. Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 spends his summer months upon a beautiful farm 

 near Pitt^eld, on which are half a hundred of the 

 original forest trees, some of them doubtless five 

 hundred years old ; trees that heard the revolu- 

 tionary cannon (or heard of them,) and before 

 that the crack of the rifle in the early Colonial 

 Indian wars, when ^Miahcomo, with his fugitive 

 Pequots, took refuge in the Berkshire hills. It is 

 said that Dr. Holmes has measured Avith tape-line 

 every tree on his place, and knows each one of 

 them with intimate personal acquaintance. * * 



To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. 

 And our first excursion in Lenox was to salute our 

 notable trees. AVe had a nervous anxiety to see 

 that the axe had not hewn, nor the lightning 

 struck them ; that no worm had gnawed at their 

 root, or cattle at their trunk; that their branches 

 were not broken, nor tlieir leaves failing from 

 drought. We found them all standing in their 

 uprightness. Tiiey lifted up their heads towards 

 Heaven, and sent down to us from all their boughs 

 a leafy message of recognition and affection. 

 Blessed be the dew that cools their evening leaves, 

 and the raine that quench their daily thirst ! May 

 the storm be as merciful to them, wdien in win- 

 ter it roars through their branches, as is a 

 harper of his harp. Let the snow lie lightly on 

 their boughs, and long hence be the summer that 

 shall find no leaves to clothe these nol^les of the 

 pasture I First in our regard, as it is first in the 



whole nobility of trees, stands the white elm ; no 

 less esteemed because it is an American tree, 

 known abroad only by importation, and never seen 

 in all its magnificence, except in our own yalleys. 

 The old oaks of England are very excellent in their 

 way, gnarled and rugged. The elm has strength 

 as significant as they, and a grace, a royalty, which 

 leaves the oak like a boor in comparison. Had the 

 elm been an English tree, and had Chaucer sec n and 

 loved and sung it, and even Shakspeare, and every 

 English poet hung some garlands upon it, it would 

 have lifted up its head now, not only the noblest 

 of all growing things, but enshrined in a thou- 

 sand rich associations of history and literature. 

 Who ever sees a hawthorn or a sweet-briar (the 

 eglantine) that his thoughts do not, like a bolt of 

 light, burst through ranks of poets, and ranges of 

 sparkling thoughts which have been born since 

 England had a written language, and of which 

 the rose, the willow, the eglantine, the hawthorn, 

 and other scores of vines or trees have been the 

 cause, as they are now and for ever the sugges- 

 tions and remembrancers ? Who ever looks upon 

 an oak, and does not think of navies ; of storms ; 

 of battles on the ocean ; of the noble lyrics of the 

 sea ; of English glades ; of the fugitive Charles, 

 the tree-mounted monarch ; of the Heme oak ; 

 of parks and forests ; of Robin Hood and his mer- 

 ry men. Friar Tuck not excepted ; of old baronial 

 halls with mellow light streaming through dia- 

 mond-shaped panes upon oaken floors, and of elab- 

 orate carved wainscotings? And who that has 

 ever travelled in English second-class cushionless 

 cars has not other and less genial remembrances 

 of the enduring solidity of the impervious, unelas- 

 tic oak ? One such oak I have,and only one, yet dis- 

 covered. On my west line is a fringe of forest, 

 through which rushes in spring, trickles in early 

 summer, and dies out entirely in August, the is- 

 sues of a noble spring from near the hill-side. 

 On the eastern edge of this belt of trees stands 

 the monarchal oak, wide branching on the east 

 toward the open pasture and the free light, but 

 on its western side lean and branchless from the 

 pressure of the neighboring trees ; for trees, like 

 men, cannot grow to the real nature that is in 

 them when crowded by too much society. Both 

 need to be touched on every side by sun and air, 

 and by nothing else, if they are to be rounded 

 out into full symmetry. Growing right up to its 

 side, and through its branches is a long wifely elm 

 — beauty and grace embosomed by strength. Their 

 leaves come and go together, and all the summer 

 long they mingle their rustling harmonies. Their 

 roots pasture in the same soil, nor could either of 

 them be hewn down without tearing away the 

 branches and marring tlie beauty of the other. 

 And a tree, when thorouglily disbranched, may, 

 by time and care, regain its beauty. * * * 



Upon the croM'n of the hill, just where an artist 

 would have planted them, had he wished to have 

 them exactly in the right place, grew some two 

 hundred stalwart and ancient maples, beeches, 

 ashes, and oaks, a narrow belt-like forest, form- 

 ing a screen from the northern and western winds 

 in winter and a harp of endless music for the sum- 

 mer. The wretched owner of this farm, tempted 

 by the devil, cut down the whole blessed band and 

 brotherhood of trees, that he might fill his pocket 

 with two pitiful dollars a cord for the wood! 

 Well, his pocket was the best part of him. The 



