130 



€l]c Janitor's ittontl)lii fa tstior. 



such additions will depend much upon the na- 

 ture of the soil to which they are to he applied. 

 A small per rentage of pearl ash or wood ashes, 

 of nitrate of soda, or common salt, and a sul- 

 phate of magnesia— five pounds each of the 

 potash and soda salts, and ten pounds of the 

 magnesia salt to each one hundred pounds of 

 bones— would render the mixture more suited to 

 every soil and crop. At the same time, if the 

 soil like those formed from the felspar rocks 

 abound in potash, or like those which border the 

 sea, be rich in soda, or like those which owe 

 their origin to the slates, or to magnesian lime- 

 stones, contain already too much magnesia, any 

 addition to these several substances would obvi- 

 ously be thrown away. The principle of adding 

 such things being recognized as sound, the 

 knowledge and discretion of the farmer must be 

 exercised in determining how far such additions 

 are likely to be profitable, or to make a small 

 preliminary experiment byway of trial. 



&l)c Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., SEPTEMBER 30, 1848 



Address delivered before the Farmers of North 

 Grafton County, New Hampshire, on occa- 

 sion of the meeting of the Ammonusuck Ag- 

 ricultural Society at Lisbon, August 10, 1848 : 

 by Isaac Hill of Concord. 



The copy of a London book, printed in the 

 year 1700, with the autograph of William Duin- 

 mer, who was lieutenant governor of the colony 

 of Massachusetts Bay in 1723, loaned me by a 

 friend, shows that as long as one hundred and 

 fifty years ago there were among our ancestors 

 of the Anglo-Saxon race men who could appre- 

 ciate the best advantages of improved agricul- 

 ture. The title of the book is " Campania Felix ; 

 Happiness of a Rural Life or a Discourse of the 

 Benefits and Improvements of Husbandry; con- 

 taining Directions lor all manner of Tillage, Pas- 

 turage and Plantations: as also for the making 

 of Cyder and Perry." Facing the title page of 

 this ancient book is a copperplate engraving of 

 mountains in the distance — of a farm-house and 

 forest in the rear — of extended oblong fields fur- 

 ther off and nearer smaller square enclosures 

 laid off in rows of the growing crops — the lawn 

 in front with the oak tree shade and the postern 

 fastenings, leading down to a still more extended 

 enclosure of hedge row fence, marks the field 

 under cultivation, the sower laying along the 

 seed in drills, the ploughman with his instru- 

 ment unwieldy and unlike the improved plough 

 of modern days, driving the pair of horses that 

 without headstall or other gearing than the col- 

 lar holding the traces attached to the plough are 

 taught to walk in their places like our own well 

 trained oxen : all this for the farm part. Then 

 comes more prominently and fronting still near- 

 er to the view the mansion of the British land 

 proprietor, pitched as two sides of a building of 

 three stories, the half of an oblong square : a 

 quadrangular plat of gravelled walks directing 

 from the entrance way directly fronts the man- 

 sion itself: in this plat are laid off oilier raised 

 plats or parterres with borders shaped to the 

 narrowing down of the larger plat; and each of 

 the smaller plats replenished as flower gardens. 

 With the array of flowers and evergreen trees 

 in the smaller plats on the southerly side of the 

 picture, and looking fully to the sun, is the 

 range of green-houses to protect the early plants, 

 orange and lemon trees, myrtles and other exot- 

 ics difficult to be prcservi .1. 



In the Indian Museum at Salem, Massachu- 

 setts, among the curiosities there collected by 



navigators to the four quarters of the globe, sev- 

 eral years ago, I remember to have seen a small 

 vessel or cup like the holding cup to an acorn, 

 about the size of a man's hand : this cup in its 

 hollowed part, wrought in the infancy of science, 

 was the work of an artist intended to represent 

 by almost innumerable bodies and faces of hu- 

 man kind in microscopic particles, the miseries 

 of the damned in the punishment to which se- 

 vere religionists have doomed the erring human 

 race after death. Jt was the work of a monk — 

 an engraving which no modern artist could 

 transcend. This representation, not as a paint- 

 ing, but rather as the curious work of the sculp- 

 tor, made the stronger impression upon the 

 mind of the beholder the longer it was viewed: 

 deeper and more vivid became the sympathy or 

 the terror and dread of suffering as the eye fixed 

 itself upon the minute and diminutive individual 

 whose wrilhings of limbs and contortions of face 

 seemed to impart animation and life to the wood 

 of a single color which, like the marble from the 

 hand of the lapidary, spoke out the whole im- 

 pression. The unique representation at the Sa- 

 lem Museum, as a work of art, was in my untaught 

 judgment, one of the greatest of all the devices 

 of human skill : as works of art of the highest 

 merit in drawing, painting and sculpture, as well 

 as in the highest productions of genius in poetry 

 or prose, we may go behind the present genera- 

 tion for centuries. So in the frontispiece to an 

 English book on Husbandry, a simple duodeci- 

 mo picture, I have found while writing out these 

 notices objects which display all the fascinations 

 of rural life resulting from the better taste which 

 may prompt the action of the independent 

 farmer. 



The author of this book of husbandry, said to 

 be " Tim JYourse, gentleman " — meaning, I pre- 

 sume, the gentleman farmer of that day in Eng- 

 land, who planned, but did not put his own hand 

 to the work, has well described the fascinations 

 as well as the benefits of the farmer's employ- 

 ment: he could have scarcely better described 

 it, had he, like the happiest and most indepen- 

 dent fanners of New England, performed a sub- 

 stantial part of the labor with his own hands. 

 He begins his first chapter "of country affairs 

 in general " as follows : 



"Before 1 come to speak particularly of mat- 

 ters relating to a country life, it will nut he im- 

 proper to glance a little upon this subject as it 

 offers itself to our genera] prospect, which in- 

 deed is both pleasant and profitable. And first 

 for its pleasure, what can he more suitable to a 

 serious and well disposed mind, than to contem- 

 plate the improvements of Nature by the various 

 methods of art and culture: the same spot of 

 ground, which some time since was nothing but 

 heath and desert, and under the original curse of 

 thorns and briers, ajler a little labor and expense, 

 seems restored to its primitive purity in the state of 

 paradise. Curious groves and walks, fruitful 

 fields of corn and vine, with flowery meadows, 

 and sweet pastures well stored with all sorts of 

 cattle for food and use, together with all the ad- 

 vantages and delights of water currents and riv- 

 ulets, as al.-o with infinite variety of fruit-bearing 

 trees, of beautiful flowers, of sweet and fragrant 

 herbs, &c. are the familiar and easy productions 

 of industry and ingenuity ; all which, as they af- 

 ford extreme delight to our senses, so must it 

 needs be a ravishing pleasure for the contempla- 

 tive to consider. What an infinite variety of vege- 

 tables, so beaxdiful and grateful to all our senses, 

 and so sovereign and useful for health, may be pro- 

 duced out of a little portion of earth well cultivated, 

 ami nil this from little seeds or grains of small 



which may he looked on as a new creation of 

 things; when from nothing, or from something 

 next to nothing, we become the instruments of 

 producing, or of restoring them in such perfec- 

 tion. 



"And although the practice of husbandry be 

 a business of some toil and care, of some hazard 

 and expense, yet there is this in it to make all 

 things easy, viz. : when a man shall consider 

 the gradual advancements of growing nature, so 

 that every day represents tilings under new co- 

 lors and beauties, it is pleasant to see a field of 

 corn [in England the term corn includes wheat, 

 rye, and the other bread-making grains except- 

 ing our own Indian corn which is not a favorite 

 to the soil of the British islands on account of 

 their fog-wrapped humidity] shooting out of the 

 earth, which pleasure is soon lost in a new and 

 succeeding pleasure of seeing the whole surface 

 of the ground, upon the approach, perhaps of 

 winter, covered with the blades of green corn, 

 fresh and verdant as the virgin spring. This 

 pleasure likewise is again succeeded by others 

 arising still from the new appearances of nature, 

 which must needs be a growing delight, foras- 

 much as every day leads to a nearer prospect 

 of harvest, which is the crown of all our labors. 

 "The like content may be reaped from all the 

 other employments of the country, whether they 

 relate to planting, or to the ordering of pastur- 

 age. The meadow which to-day is green, two 

 or three days hence appears in another livery, 

 even that of flowers, one week white, anon yel- 

 low, as soon purple, or perhaps ill divers colors 

 at once, as if nature had borrowed its beauties 

 from art and fancy. Fruit-bearing trees, for 

 some time, are covered with spotless and sweet- 

 smelling blossoms, such as perfume the air and 

 ravish our senses with surprising delights: these 

 dropping off, the fruit itself begins to appear in 

 its infancy, which every day grows more fair un- 

 til it arrive to maturity, and then serves further 

 to gratify our senses in yielding us foo.l of deli- 

 cacy, but more eminently by affording us those 

 excellent liquors [beer, ale and porter from malt, 

 and spirit from the distillation of grains, all of 

 which, used in judgment and moderation, were 

 intended more for man's benefit than injury] by 

 which the heart of man is made glad, and his 

 body sustained and nourished. 



"Indeed, were we to take up always with any 

 one entertainment of nature, we should soon 

 surfeit with it, as we see it happens daily to us 

 in other cases where the constant fruition of one 

 thing ceases to affect us: but where there is 

 such an infinite variety of things (such as are 

 the productions of the earth) tendered to us suc- 

 cessively, and in their several seasons, this can- 

 not hut sweeten the mind with wonderful con- 

 tent ; so that as the toils and labors are still re- 

 turning, in like manner are the sweet fruits of 

 them also: and even toil and labor itself has this 

 pleasure in it, that it quickens appetite and con- 

 tributes to health and strength of body where it 

 is not in excess and accompanied with disorders. 

 And when a man attentively considers the annu- 

 al progress of nature through all its stages and 

 attractions, it cannot but mind him of his own 

 continued changes still leading him forward 

 towards his end, which is or ought to be a thing 

 of more consequence to him than all the other 

 pleasures which he may justly hope, to reap 

 from the several blessings and seasons of the 



n orth in 



ihat this kind of em- 



ployment may most properly be called a recrea- 

 tion, not only from the refreshment it gives to 

 the mind, but from the restoration of nature, 



year." 



After exhibiting as proof of the great esteem 

 which the ancients had for Husbandry, the as- 

 cribing of divine honors to the inventors and 

 promoters of it; the heathens consecrating to 

 their gods and goddesses some particular plant 

 thereby making its preservation the object of 

 their particular attention ; the Egyptians, the 

 greatest corn-masters of the world in early times, 

 worshipping Apis (by many supposed to he the 

 patriarch Joseph) under the symbol of a cow or 

 calf, to whose labor they chiefly owed their sus- 

 tenance and life ; exhibiting also individuals held 

 in greatest honor and veneration who procured 

 peace and plenty to the whole world, as Augus- 

 tus Cesar of Rome, in whose reign the temple 

 of Janus was shut, who delighted himself in 



