FARMERS' REGISTER— TREES— AGRICULTURE &c. IN VIRGINIA. 



613 



And all this loss by the article of Canada thistles 

 alone, a serious sum for an ordinary farmer, and 

 yet I do not think the sum is overrated; confident 

 I am, I can name a dozen individuals, wliose loss 

 the past year has been greater from this cause than 

 the amount specified above. 



And now farmers of West New-York, are you 

 willing that business should go on thus ? Remem- 

 ber your experience with thistles is as yet but th.e 

 beginning of sorrow. The work of exterminating 

 the Canada thistle, must be set about vigorously and 

 simultaneously, or we may bid adieu to all our 

 fiimily prosperity and greatness. I say simulta- 

 neously, for unless the attack is made in this way 

 it will fail. It will avail me little or nothing to 

 spend my time and money in ridding my farm of 

 this pestilent weed, wjien my next neighbor raises 

 bushels of the seed, and with every wind distri- 

 butes it gratis far and near. We have so many 

 farms occupied by men into whose souls no ray of 

 public spirit ever entered, or if it did, was instantly 

 quenched by the spirit of tlie bar, that nothing for 

 the extermination of the thistle will ever be done 

 except by compulsion, by legislative enactments, 

 strongly drawn, and vigorously enforced. 



A history of the progress of the Canada thistle 

 like that of the cholera, v/ould prove an interesting 

 work. More than two hundred years since, a 

 Catholic missionary sent it as a curious and beau- 

 tiful plant from the banks of the St. Lawrence to 

 a public garden at Paris, and from thence it has 

 spread over Eurojjc. * * * * 

 * * * From Canada it has entered the United 

 States, and is proceeding southward, if not rapidly, 

 yet surely. Winds waft it, the traveller trans- 

 ports it in his hay, and it is distril)uted with various 

 seeds particularly those of clover and grass. This 

 latter fact speaks but poorly for tlie morality of the 

 man who would perpetrate such an act, for it is no 

 better than theft or highway robbery, yet men who 

 claim to be respectable decent men, do this annu- 

 ally. We have been informed that the first Canada 

 thistles seen in the county of Cayuga, sprung up 

 by the road side, where a way -faring man had fed 

 his team of horses. There is scarcely a depart- 

 ment of domestic industry, where the evils of this 

 weed are not felt; and it ill becomes a community 

 possessing the proverbial enterprise and persever- 

 ance of American Farmers to sit down and fold 

 up their arms in hopeless despondency, while so 

 serious an inroad is making on their prosperity. 

 Let those who have the thistle on their fiirms vigo- 

 rously set about checking their spread, and if i)os- 

 sihle exterminate them — above all, let it be a 

 'settled axiom, never, under any circumstance, to 

 allow a thistle to go to seed; let those who have 

 none on their farms see that none get rooted there; 

 nothing is easier than to eradicate them on their 

 first appearance, but a patch of an acre, experience 

 has proved, is an affair not to be sneezed at. Let 

 legislative aid be asked, which we are confident 

 would be readily granted, and in all proceedings 

 with regard to the thistle let it be remembered, 

 that half-way measures will avail nothing ; it is 

 the whole or none, all or nothing system which 

 must be adopted, or there will be little success. 



PLOUGHPOIXT. 



COS CENT UIC CIRCLES IN TREES." 



From .Silliiiian's Jouri.al.of Science. 



In the year 1827, a large lot of hemlock timljer 

 was cut from the north-eastern slope of East Rock, 

 rtear New Haven, for the purpose of forming a 

 foundation for the wharf which bounds the basin of 

 the Farmington Canal on the cast. While inspect- 

 ing and measuring that timlier, at the time of its 

 delivery, I took particular notice of the successive 

 layers, each of which constitute a year's grov.th of 

 tlie tree ; and which, in that kind of wood, are 

 very distinct. These layers were of various 

 breadth, indicating a growth five or six times as 

 full in some years as in others, precedingor follow- 

 ing. Thus, every tree has preserved a record of 

 the seasons for the whole of its growth, Avhelh.er 

 thirty years, or two hundred, — and what is worthy 

 of observation, every tree told the same story. Thus, 

 if you begun at the outer layer of two trees, one 

 young and the other old, and counted back twenty 

 years, — if the young tree indicated by a full layer, a 

 growing season for that kind of timber, the older 

 tree indicated the same. 



My next observation was, that the growing sea- 

 sons clustered together, and also the meager seasons 

 came in companies. Thus, it was rare to find a 

 meager season immediately precedingor following 

 a season of good growth; but, if you commenced 

 in a cluster of thin and meager layers, and pro- 

 ceeded on, it gradually enlarged ancl swelled to the 

 maximum, after ^vhich a decrease l;egan and v.ent 

 on, until it terminated in a minimum. 



A third observation was, that there appeared 

 nothing like periodicity in the return of the full 

 years or the meager, but the clusters alternated at 

 irregular intervals ; neither could there be observ- 

 ed, in comparing clusters, any law by which the 

 number of years was regulated. 



LEGISLATION AND AGRICULTURE IN VIRGI- 

 NIA. 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Register. 



February ISth, 1834. 

 In your 8th number, there is a communication 

 signed T. B. iMcR.,on the subject of " Encourage- 

 ment of Agriculture by the Legislature of Virgi- 

 nia," which so well expresses, what I myself have 

 long and deeply felt, that I cannot refrain fi-om 

 raising my feeble voice in praise of the author, and 

 imploring our legislature, not only to meditate at- 

 tentively on his suggestions ; but to act upon them, 

 before they return to give an account of their 

 stewardship to their constituents. Can it be pos- 

 sible, Mr. Editor, that they will suffer another 

 session to pass away, without the slightest effort 

 whatever, to do any thing for the cause of agricul- 

 ture in our beloved state, — of agriculture — that 

 indispensable support of every [public institution; 

 that essential aliment of all the different trades, 

 callings and professions, which exist in every well 

 organized government; — that vital source of ail 

 national prosperity ? Would to Heaven, that every 

 man in the community, felt your correspondent's 

 ai)peal, as a true patriot should do ! — poor old Vir- 

 ginia would not much longer remain in the death- 

 like sleep, that has paralyzed all her energies for so 

 many long, wearisome and painful years of lethargy 

 on her part; and I may add, almost of (/es/)fl/r, on the 

 part of her warmest and truest friends. She would 

 call upon her pul>lic functionaries, in a voice that 

 they durst not disobey, to abandon forever, all klle 



