34 



THE GENESEE FARMER 



Feb. 5. 1831 



render the plans and operations of each differ- 

 ent, while the events, may be similar. That 

 there is mnch room for improvement, and that 

 the subjects are of the greatest importance to 

 our country, I think none will dispute. Formy- 

 solf, being an inexperienced farmer, I look upon 

 it as the opening of a channel, through which 

 much good is to flow. To the old and experien- 

 ced, it will be a source through which they may 

 present to the public, such facts as their long 

 practico and experience may have taught them. 

 Many of them having been early settlers of 

 the country, and having had all the difficulties 

 to encounter, that usually occur in new settle- 

 ments, must have acquired'a practical knowl- 

 edge of the soil, climate, and other circum- 

 stances, upon which those pursuits iopend, 

 that would be of vast importance to the pies- 

 ant operators, and to rising generations. The 

 learnad Theorists will no doubt present through 

 its columns, many new and important plans 

 for its further improvement. The Naturalist 

 will have a source thro' which he may expose 

 Ins discoveries to that class ofcitizens to whom 

 they are always of the most importance. The 

 practical farmers may exchange ideas, and pre 

 sent results, upon their various plans and ope- 

 rations one with another. The young will 

 grow up undor such a state of things, with 

 their minds alive to the advancement of the 

 pursuit, and will fit them for filling the sphere 

 in which they are to act, with honor to them- 

 selves and country. I shall close this epistle 

 by wishing success to the undertaking, and en- 

 closing the amount of one year's subscription: 



A lOOSC FARMER. 



lady, who discoveredsome boys in a plum tree, 

 the sons of a wealthy neighbor. She confined 

 thorn, sent for their father, and delivered them 

 up to him, for once, with a positive assurance, 

 that if ever caught again, or if she soon heard 

 of their repeating the offence, anv where, she 

 would prosecute them at her own expense. 



Agricoea 



FOR THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Messrs. Editors — I have just returned from 

 treading down the snow round my smaller fruit 

 trees, to prevent the meadow mice from gnaw- 

 ing the bark. This operation is generally a 

 preventive, and is most effectually performed 

 when the snow is a little softened j but it is of- 

 ten unsafe to wait for a warmer air. 



In digging round the trees in my fruit garden, 

 more than a year ago, the earth was turned by 

 the spade inioard towards the trees, and in con 

 sentience, it was raised six or eight inches 

 higher than the common surface of the ground. 

 No injury to the trees has resulted from these 

 little mounds ; and [ now observe that the 

 snow on them is so thin as to preclude the ne 

 cessity of treading it down, except in drifts 

 near the fences. D- T. 



1 Mo. 24, 1831. 



TOR THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Trom the showing, as the lawyers say, of A 

 Farmer, in your number 3, I suspect that his 

 hot-bed, made of horso dung that had been 

 kept under shelter, was too dry, and that this 

 was the case with the dirt, or soil, which had 

 been removed from it, besides being surchar- 

 ged with gasses evolved by a dry heat. Prob- 

 ably a copious wetting, by a good rain, would 

 have cured the evil in both cases. S. 



ROBBING OF GARDENS & ORCHARDS. 



FOR THE GENKSF.i FARMER. 



The remarks of Mr. Dearborn, on this sub- 

 ject, in your last number, cer airly demand 

 very serious attention. The laws ought, in 

 the first place, to niako every taking away, 

 without leave, a misdemeanor, if not techni- 

 cally a theft ; and in the next place, we all 

 ought to bo more severely rigidj in punishing, 

 for every little theft, for such tney are, though 

 it be only a handful of fruit. 1 once caught a 

 parcel of boys stealing fruit from my garden 

 who told me plainly, that taking a tittle fruit 

 was not stealing; but I soon convinced them 

 to contrary, by confining them till their father 

 came, who happened to be a lawyer and n 

 Judge It is said that our revised laws have 

 introduced some desirable reform, in relation 

 to oetty thefts, making them misdemeanors. — 

 If such be the fact, let us all help to make ihe 

 law operative, of which there is certainly needi 

 enough. Instead of searing young offenders, 

 depredating upon our fruit, expose and punish 

 every one, and they will soon find out that ho- 

 nesty is the best policy. It is altogether wrong 

 to let these little pilferers go unpunished, till 

 they become confirmed thieves, and large es 

 nough to go, as men, to the state prison! Spare 

 no one, should be our maxim, of whatever age 

 or condition. I should call him a had neighbor, 

 who would spare my son in such n case An vx 

 cedent example was set by an opulent widow 



SPONTANEOUS VEGETATION. 



FOR THE GENESEE FARUEJt. 



Messrs. Editors — Your correspondent A. 

 B. gives many curious cases of the vegetation 

 of seeds under circumstances, which to many 

 persons seem utterly at variance with facts 

 within evory person's knowledge, and proceeds 

 to ask several very pertinent questions, predi- 

 c ited on the facts which he relates, all of 

 which 1 am ready to admit ; for I have noticed 

 the most of them for a good many years, and 

 to my mind there is nothing in them inconsist- 

 ent with the soand principles of reason or 

 philosophy; and at once to answer his ques- 

 tions, and reconcile the seeming discrepancies 

 between the facts as they appear, and our ex- 

 perience on the same points, it will be necessa- 

 ry to go back and to assert some probabilities, 

 and assume some grounds by hypothesis, which 

 existed antecedent to our race, or its history. 



At the original creation, when the earth was 

 void, and darkness was on the face of it, when 

 the waters were parted from the land, and con- 

 cretion and chrystafzation of the earthy and 

 metalic matter held in solution by the water, 

 according to one theory; or according to ano- 

 ther, when the globe from a melted globule of 

 matter, first wheeled into its course, and took 

 its station according to the laws of gravity and 

 motion, and its surface began to cool, and 

 the vapours to condense on its surface, then 

 indeed was darkness on the face of the deep, 

 and then in either case, the probabilities are 

 irresistible that there was not one particle of 

 sand, earth, or vegetable mould on its whole 

 surface, and we find wherever it has been pe- 

 netrated, that its whole frame work and nu- 

 cleus is solid rock, and the probability is. that 

 the loose earthy panicles do not occupy on 

 the whole surface an average depth ot two 

 feet, all of which are the result f attrition by 

 tho commotion of water seekr g its level — 

 earthquakes ; and by decomposition by the ac- 

 tion of air, heat and cold, and the tremendious 

 turmoils and convulsions that the globe has 

 been subject to by the eruption of imprisoned 

 gasses, and heated vapour, consmitly emitted 

 from the great furnaces in the center, winch 

 ev6n now bum with undiminished strenth in 

 the two hundred volcanos known now to ex- 

 ist, and by which the whole of the elevated 

 and mountainous ranges, were pushed from 

 their original level, as evidently appears by 

 the confusion and dip of their stratification, — 

 the sudden sinking of the great cavities which 

 are now seas, — the breaking of ihe barriers 

 that confined immense reservoirs of water in 

 elevated regions, all rushing to the lowest lev- 

 el, — the constant changes of the water cour- 

 ses, all combined, are abundantly sufficient to 

 account for the mechanical formation of the 

 soil. 



We also have the Mosaic account of one 

 great flood, since the formation of man, and 

 the learned and indefatigable geologists of the 

 present day, show by a series of facts and 

 observations, which are not and cannot be dis- 

 puted, that there has been three periods of 

 great and general deluges. The petrifactions 



and organic fossil remains of the peculiar kinds 

 imbedded in the formations of the first, do not 

 appear in the second, having been all destroy- 

 ed ; they were not then in existence, and form 

 a series of vegetable and animal races, which 

 havo not existed since; the same holds good 

 with the second flood or deluge, but the re- 

 mains of the third contain only the different 

 species that now are found existing on the sur- 

 face of the earth, all of which in the subsiding 

 of their waters, constitute an immense power 

 and an active agent to facilitate the operation. 

 By all of these facts and reasonings I wish to 

 show that in all probability soil is the result of 

 attrition and decomposition, and is an accumu- 

 lative creation, constantly going on, though in 

 a much slower manner since the great agents 

 have left off business, if I may so expiess my- 

 self, and retired to their great beds and repo- 

 sitories ; and as a further proof, I assert that 

 it is not a very difficult operation to take a 

 quantity of earthy soil, and in a very short 

 time separate it, and assign each individual 

 particle to its parent rock, as easily as a fores- 

 ter would a basket of chips to its parent tree. 

 The different classes of rocks are placed in 

 perfectly regular and mechanical structure, the 

 laws of which are perfectly familiar with 

 those who study that science", one kind alter- 

 nating with, and resting on its fellow, and so 

 on with but little variation ad infinitum. 



Now if it is admitted as probable that soil is 

 artificial, and the concomitant, and the result 

 of the final settling and adjustment of this 

 great globe, according io the governing laws 

 assigned to it by its Creator, and that they have 

 had many and different periods of action, then 

 it can easily be comprehended how seeds mav 

 have been deposited to any and all depths to 

 which Boil reaches. Now recurs the question 

 how they resist for such long periods the de- 

 compose ion and destruction to which all oth- 

 ers are liable, which when planted too deep 

 are rotted and lost. To which I answer, that 

 heat, light, air and moisture, are imueiiously 

 necessary to cause germination, and when 

 seed- arc lost by planting, it is because they 

 are not below the heat necessary to cause 

 them to sprout, but not being able to get light 



and air soon enoi.gh. are exhausted and rot. 



But place a seed below thai point where the 

 heat necessary to germination reaches, and 

 beyond the reach of light and air, and it is in- 

 humed in perpetual silence, sleep and torpor; 

 even the amphibious animals, as frogs, toads, 

 and lizzards are very frequent); found in per- 

 fect life, at great depths in the earth, and in sol- 

 id rocks. Trees and shrubs are found at equal 

 depths with their branches fresh, and in a peol- 

 ui'£ state: and the depths at which seeds with 

 sironi: glazed, or coriaceous coverings, would 

 lie and not he decomposed, might not be so 

 great when shaded by dense forests, or cover- 

 ed with a strong sward, or old decayed chip 

 manure, as in one case which A. B. cites, and 

 in cafe of the f re weeds it may, like the stone 

 seeds which require frost, require a great heat 

 to Imrst their covering, so that moisture may 

 have access, ,, r tiny may require tire to create 

 an alkali from the ashes of burnt vegetables, 

 to dissolve their covering, so that the different 

 agents may do their office. Willi manv persons 

 who are at a loss to acccunt for the spontane- 

 ous iiDpearance of vegetables on new land, 

 Birds are supposed to be the agents who dis- 

 tribute the seods ; hut this, except in very i'ew 

 cases, I conceive to be an error, as tbcv eat 

 the seeds for subsistence, and which furnish 

 the aliment for them, and are undoubtedly di, 

 seated, except those which are eaten for 

 the pulp, like the cherry, currant. &c. — and 

 the oft repeated idea that particular grounds 

 are natural to particular seeds, or that certain 

 plants grow without a seed, merely because 

 the land is favorable to it, is too preposterous 

 to need refutation. An well might a man or 

 an elephant grow out of the earth like a mush- 

 room ; and why do not, if nature is capable of 

 pontancous production, and without any nat- 



