15fi 



<£i)e .farmer's i!tont!)hj Visitor. 



a lack of some one or more of the tilings which 

 God lias appointed to make corn of. For years 

 have we labored to convince our readers and 

 hearers not oidy that a good crop of the fruits 

 of the earth cannot be formed out of nothing ; 

 but that eacli plant must have its appropri- 

 ate constituent elements within reach of its 

 living germ, in due quantity and in an available 

 form. 



A wise farmer husbands all of these raw ma- 

 terials, out of which his grain, grass, roots, ap- 

 ples and other fruit are literally made. He stu- 

 dies to accumulate in his soil the substances 

 known to be isdispensable to produce bread, 

 meat, milk, wool and cotton. To render land 

 nime and more fertile, is belter than to deposit 

 money in increasing sums in any bank in die 

 world. A rich soil has an intrinsic value lor 

 hungry human beings that appertains neither to 

 gold nor any other precious metal. The fer- 

 tilizing of whole farms as a general practice will 

 never obtain in the United States, till our chil- 

 dren are taught a knowledge of those natural 

 laws, by the operation of which poor soils may 

 be transformed into fertile ones; and rich soils 

 changed into sterile fields. The growth of plants 

 is governed by laws as fixed and enduring as 

 those which cause day and night, winter and 

 summer, rain and snow. Why will not Ameri- 

 can farmers believe this simple truth, and per- 

 mit their sons to study tillage, the formation of 

 crops, and the improvement of cultivated earth 

 as a science? If plants must be well fed to be 

 fat, as well as animals, and their food must come 

 from somewhere, why not learn how to feed 

 the germs of corn, wheat, potatoes, oats and 

 apples with the highest attainable skill and 

 er .my? Experience demonstrates that hone 

 earth, or hones themselves, sulphur and lime or 

 gypsum, chlorine and soda or common salt, and 

 other elements of crops, serve to augment the 

 harvest. There are millions of tons of the ele- 

 ments of hones and flesh wasted in this country, 

 before they are organized in any living plant as 

 food for man or beast. This waste accrues from 

 a defective system of husbandry — one that per- 

 mits no inconsiderable share of the dissolved 

 minerals and organic matter in good soils to run 

 with the water thai holds them in solution, into 

 creeks, livers, lakes and the ocean. This loss, 

 more than the removal of crops, often exhausts 

 ploughed and hoed land. The loosened soil is 

 washed and leached till the food of corn and 

 wheat, potatoes and turnips, in an available 

 shape, becomes scarce indeed. The substances 

 in the earth which form crops are lime, potash, 

 iron, soda, magnesia, silica, sulphur, phosphorus, 

 chlorine, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. 

 Every vegetable that grows takes up from the 

 soil through the pores in its roots most, if not all 

 of these elementary bodies, and fixes them in its 

 organized tissues. Cultivate a field and permit 

 no plant whatever to grow therein, and both its 

 vegetable mould and earthy salts of lime, pot- 

 ash, &r, will be slowly dissolved and washed 

 away. Partial, if not complete sterility can be 

 induced by tillage without cropping at all. Na- 

 ture renovates poor soils by constantly augment- 

 ing the annual }ield of vegetation. This she 

 does without the aid of tillage or manure of any 

 kind applied from abroad. The farmer should 

 study nature while at work in drawing the food 

 of plants from the subsoil and the atmosphere 

 to be organized and decay lo enrich the surface 

 soil. 



This is one way to improve land. Another 

 is to carry on, and spread over it just such things 

 as are known to he indispensable in forming the 

 crop. What are they? They are suits voided 

 in the liquid and solid excretions of all animals, 

 from man down to the bottom of the list. These 

 sails come from our daily food which took them 

 from the soil. In cities and villages these ele- 

 ments of crops accumulate in stables and privies : 

 because all tillers of the earth send something 

 from tin.' soil to market. Go then to the nearest 

 r'uy or village and take hack on to your (arm 

 what "ill pay the debt you owe it. There are 

 many soils in which an ounce of the voided ele- 

 ments of wheat, or corn, perfectly dry, will give 

 a gain of a pound of dry corn at the harvest, it 

 skilfully applied. By greatly extending the roots 



of a plant at a proper season, it is able lo draw 

 a much larger quantity of nourishment from any 



given soil, in addition to all that the fertilizer 

 yields to it. 



An exhausted horse may be within twenty 

 miles of a rich pasture, which one good feed of 

 oats will enable him to reach. So there may be 

 food for the hungry corn plant just beyond 

 where its roots extend ; and a little of the matter 

 stored irp in the kernels of corn to feed the 

 germs when they begin to grow, if taken from 

 the pig sty or the privy and brought into contact 

 with the roots, will cause them to grow uno fresh 

 pasture. It is the elements of the plant in this 

 fresh pasture, not really the manure, that double 

 the harvest. 



The way that a pound of guano or rich night 

 soil operates to produce sixteen pounds of grain, 

 is what we want all young farmers to study. 

 When they do this experimentally, they will see 

 that all soils possess far more of the things ne- 

 cessary to feed and clothe mankind than is gen- 

 erally supposed. It is not necessary in the 

 economy of a bountiful Providence to give the 

 earth a pound in order to get a like weight back 

 again without detriment to the soil. 



The Season. 



Summer's cone and over ; 



Fogs are falling down j 

 And with the russet tinges, 



Autumn's doing brown. 



Bough* are daily rifled 



By the busy thieves, 

 And the Book of Nature. 



Getting short of leaves. 



Round the tops of houses, 



Swallows as they flit, 

 Gives like yearly tenants, 



Notices to quit. 



Skiesof fickle temper, . 



Weep by turns and laugh, 

 Night and day together, 



Taking half and half. 



So October endeth, 



Cold and most perverse^-- 

 But the months that follow, 



Sure will pinch as worse ! — Tom Hood. 



Advices of the crops in Europe have been re- 

 ceived down to the tenth of October. Bell's 

 Life in London of the 8th October says — 

 " Though many dissent from our view, still we 

 feel confident there are more Potatoes fit for the 

 table than there has been since the crop of 1845. 

 The Belgian and French crops are very great, 

 and in good order: the arrivals from the former 

 country have commenced upon an extensive 

 scale." 



(Xy 3 In the article of food, potatoes are des- 

 tined to become a most important crop in New 

 England. In the main we believe land for potatoes 

 may be so prepared as, planted in the due season, to 

 avoid generally both the rot and the rust. If so, 

 potatoes may yield a much greater profit lo the 

 acre than Indian corn or any other kind of grain. 

 The people of the United States can no better 

 dispense with potatoes than with bread, The 

 railroads every where conducting to the best po- 

 tato ground in New England, these may he pro- 

 duced for shipping to any extent. The potatoes 

 of the northern States will scarcely meet with 

 competition in any foreign market. 



The Fruit Trade.— The Patent Office Re- 

 port for 18-17, states that the quantity of apples 

 shipped from Oneida county, N. Y., (chiefly from 

 four townships,) was ten thousand barrels in 

 1845, seven or eight thousand in 184G; and 

 eighteen thousand in 1847- The most produc- 

 tive orchard, known as the Goodsell orchard, 

 containing about six acres, yielded in 1845 more 

 than one thousand barrels, which sold for over a 

 thousand dollars. — Exchange paper. 



Crown Lands in Canada. — The Provincial 

 Government is offering liberal inducements to 

 settlers in portions of Canada West, agencies 

 having been established for the allotment of the 

 Crown lands iu the Wellington and Simcoe dis- 

 tricts. Every settler eighteen years of age and 

 a British subject, who will present himself with 

 a satisfactory cerlificate of probity and sobriety, 

 and having means of subsistence sufficient for 

 the lime that must elapse before the land be- 

 comes adequately productive, is to have fifty 

 acres on condition that he takes possession with- 

 in a month, that he puts twelve acres iu a state of 

 cultivation in the course of four years, and that 

 he builds a house on the lot and there resides. 

 In addition, such proprietors of fifty acre lots 

 will be entitled to purchase each three lots of 

 fifty acres, or a hundred and fifty acres in all ; at 

 the rate of four shillings (one dollar) per acre, 

 for ready money, thus becoming proprietors of 

 two hundred acres. The land iu these districts 

 is fine as any in Canada, and there are few parts 

 of the world in which better laud is to be found, 

 and it is well watered and timbered. — JYew York 

 Commercial Advertiser. 



It is said there are four hundred townships — 

 immensely large towns of ten miles squ;'-. 

 each — of that fine country of Canada West be- 

 tween the lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron and in- 

 cluding Simcoe. This country, by a generous 

 policy of the owners and perhaps of the govern- 

 ment at home, is fast settling: the soil is gene- 

 rally that of the best wheat region of the north- 

 western States. The Ogdenshurgh railroad line 

 will directly connect that great country and the 

 seaboard as at the nearest point with Boston and 

 Portsmouth when our railroads central in New 

 Hampshire shall be completed. Who can cal- 

 culate the impetus to trade which a free inter- 

 course with and through the Canadas shall give 

 by the railroads touching or running through 

 Vermont and New Hampshire ? Few people 

 can be aware of the extent of this trade — of the 

 amount of merchandise passing each way — of 

 the shipping at the wharves lading and unlading. 

 Will this trade come speedily? It will begin so 

 soon as the railroads already laid out shall he 

 completed. 



Low Fares and increased Travel. — It is 

 truly gratifying to find that all the railroads iu 

 New England from which we have any returns 

 — which have reduced their rates of fare this 

 season — have materially increased not only their 

 number of passengers, but also their receipts. 



The average rate of fare on the roads termi- 

 nating in Boston, including season and commu- 

 tation tickets, does not much, if any, exceed one 

 and one-half cents per mile ; yet all these roads 

 are doing a very prosperous business, and great- 

 ly enhancing the value of property both iu the ci- 

 ty anil along the entire line, and also for many 

 miles beyond, as they bring those regions not 

 penetrated by them, as much nearer to market 

 than formerly, as the entire length of the rail- 

 road. 



It is difficult to arrive, by demonstration, at 

 the true value of railroads in Massachusetts, or 

 at the increased value of property in conse- 

 quence of their construction ; but we think it 

 cannot be beyond the mark to estimate it — in the 

 city and Slate at large, and in Stales adjoining, 

 benefitted by them at ten times their cost; or at 

 least equal, annually, since their average comple- 

 tion, to the entire cost of all the roads in the 

 State. No man, not familiar with t lie position 

 of things before their construction, and now, can 

 realize and appreciate their influences. The ve- 

 ry ground on which the United Stales Hotel, 

 where we now write, and the immense Worces- 

 ter and Western railroad depots, and a thousand 

 brick buildings, now stand, was — if we may use 

 a Hihernlcism — water ten jears ago; and the 

 very extensive flats around Boston, always cov- 

 ered with water in the depth of five to eiglit feet, 

 at high tide, will be speedily filled in, and at no 

 distant day he covered with dwellings, and work- 

 shops and manufactories. And those results are 



