22 



qH)c .fanner's iflcmtljln faisttor . 



Letter prom Maria Edgeworth. — Tlie Al- 

 bany Ar^us published llie following leller, re- 

 ceived :i lew (Jays since, by a gentleman of iliat 

 ciiy. The writing is described as very clear and 

 beautiful : — 



" EdgiiForthtotcn, January 21st, 1849. 



We are all Well and sale in this part of the 

 country ; 1 wish I could say the same of all Ire- 

 land, bill we live in hope from the good govern- 

 ment of Lord Clarendon and the had success ol 

 all the disturbances in France and elsewhere all 

 over the world. As to potatoes, we are not sure 

 what llie result will he ; some will remain in ihis 

 country, sufficient for seed ; and the wish, J be- 

 lieve, of sensible people — meaning particularly 

 myself— is, that potatoes should not be given up 

 entirely, but that they should never again be 

 made the staple or only food of the people. As 

 the judicious Ricardo long sjnee pointed out to 

 me, it can never be advantageous to a nation to 

 have its national food defective in the essential 

 requisites of storahility — nor to have it of the 

 lowest priced production that can support hu- 

 man lile, in which case there can be neither re- 

 serve nor relief when there is a failure. One 

 great disadvantage peculiar to Ireland, in its sole 

 dependence on the potato crop and culture, is, 

 that it would humor and encourage the lazy ha- 

 bits of the people — I do not mean merely in lazy 

 bed potatoes, but in the whole system. The cul- 

 tivation of other vegetables, and the having re- 

 course to other means of subsistence, will in 

 time raise the character and call forth the ener- 

 gies of the Irish people. So said Berkeley, in 

 bis Jurist, long ago. 



We are now looking with much curiosity ami 

 some with much hope — but I am not of the last 

 number — to what may be the consequence of 

 the discovery and working of the new California 

 gold veins. 1 wish you would tell rue your opin- 

 ion, and any facts J oil have collected, though it 

 is hardly time yet to ascertain such lads. ]t is, 

 however, time for me to finish this leiler and to 

 assure you that I am, very sincerely and affec- 

 tionately, your grateful friend, 



Maria Edgewortu, in my 83d year." 



QL\)t Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., FEBRUARY 28, 1849. 



The value of a number of the Visitor contain- 

 ing ouly extracts* 



When, near the close of ihe month of Febru- 

 ary, the editor saw, six hundred miles from 

 home, the first number of his favorite Monthly 

 Visitor for llie year 1849 wilh only a single origi- 

 nal notice as an apology, announcing the cause 

 of such an omission as laid never occurred in 

 the whole space of len years of its previous ex- 

 istence, he felt mortified in that little pride 

 which physical and mental suffering had left 

 him. It would, perhaps, take an entire number 

 of ihe Visitor to recount all the troubles of the 

 editor for the last two years — doubles which 

 have called him many limes from home with 

 the additional worr'unent and suffering of an in- 

 curable disease of body, in which, for the last 

 ten years, his life hail been lengthened out much 

 b •yoiul his own expectation. In that time he 

 has seen many of his friends and acquaintance, 

 Jiis coleinporaries in public and private life — 

 many in apparently better health than him- 

 self — cut off in the midst of their years and 

 numbered now only with the men and things 

 that were. 



With the melancholy reflections resulting 

 from nearly a month of utter physical pros! ra- 

 tion, and the continued labor to right a most vex- 

 atious personal prosecution commenced againsl 

 iii in in a distant Slate, the editor of the Visitor 

 took up the first number of llie present year, 

 prepared in his absence. He sat down and read 

 it over article by article ; and before getting 



through with it, he will declare upon his honor, 

 that he found as much or more interesting mat- 

 ter lo the farmers of New Hampshire and of 

 New England than the paper would have con- 

 tained if half of its pages had been filled wilh 

 the matter which he could have prepared from 

 abundant materials noted down in journies of 

 the last four years, which he has not yet found 

 time and strength to write out. We think our 

 diligent readers — and diligent attentive readers 

 we know we have had from the frequency of 

 personal inquiries relative to our own produc- 

 tions—will agree with us that the number of the 

 Visitor bearing date January 31, 1849, is not the 

 least interesting of the one hundred and twenty- 

 one numbers of the paper that have appeared 

 in the last ten years. 



As a matter of curiosity and valuable for ils 

 information to farmers, we will take the article 

 copied from the report of the Commissioner ol 

 Patents on the " Hog Crop ol ihe Western 

 States," written by Mr. Cist of Cincinnati, Ohio. 

 When at that flourishing "Queen of the West," 

 four years ago, in a residence of two weeks, we 

 had occasion to meet the gentleman who fur- 

 nished and wrote the above article, as we did 

 oilier gentlemen, ready and willing to show us 

 all over the extensive establishments of a cily 

 which scarcely finds a parallel in the rise and 

 progress of cities of the known world. At ihe 

 time we were there, an introduction was had to 

 a medical school, at which our own professor 

 Mussey was giving a course of lectures on sur- 

 gery to two hundred and fifty young men pre- 

 paring to go forth in practice, as required by ihe 

 calls of the new settlements. At the same place 

 we saw immense iron establishments, where 

 pigs and blooms were converted into wrought 

 iron flanges of the size of large timber beams. 

 The season of hog-killing had passed by; but 

 we were shown the place where not long previous 

 seventeen hundred had been killed and dressed 

 in a day, beginning with one man rapping the 

 animal on the head — another sticking lo be 

 Med — two more handling for a scald; and thus 

 in a row going through ihe whole process of 



opening of spring, the editor hopes to return to | 

 the scene of his Ions active life, and to make of , 

 his monthly periodical for this year a contribu- 

 tion not less useful to his brother farmers than it 

 has heretofore contained and sent forth. 



Essex County Transactions. 



dressing. The article of Mr. Cist graphically 

 describes every thing: it has the uier.t of doing 

 Ihis literally, so that the raisers of pork in 

 smaller quantities in New England may under- 

 stand how much heller the economy of man- 

 agement of the great Western pork establish- 

 ments than that where the greater cost of rear- 

 ing hogs in our part of the country would seem 

 lo require that every part should be saved. The 

 extraction of lard oil and the manufacture of 

 star candles from the refuse fat of Ihe hoc were 

 introduced as the invention of German--, of 

 whom nearly one-third of the population of Cin- 

 cinnati consists: every panicle of what might 

 seem to he wastage is brought into profitable 

 use. Is it not wonderful, in the infancy of the 

 young West, that a single city should furnish for 

 commerce to the value of six millions of dollars 

 as the product of only one animal ? 



We will not enumerate here all the articles of 

 llie first number of the. Visitor which we claim- 

 ed valuable to he read and preserved. We read 

 the penny papers that are daily published in Ihe 

 cities: each succeeding morning conies with a 

 seeming continued repetition of events and 

 speculations that grow up in a night and perish 

 in a night. Such matter as is given in the Visi- 

 tor is interesting at all limes: the volumes of six, 

 eight and ten years gone by, are good to go back 

 and look upon. With health reinstated on the 



We are again indebted lo the Hun. D. P. King,, 

 member of Congress from Massachusetts, for a 

 copy of the Transactions of the Essex Agricul-1 

 tnral Society. In a neat style of legible type. 

 these transactions embrace an annual pamphlet 

 of more than a hundred pages oclavo ; and of 

 its expenditures no part is probably more useful 

 than that which diffuses among its members lltftj 

 information which carries along the history of a 

 society whose usefulness is proved by the spirit 

 which has kept it in progress for thirty years. 

 The Massachusetts Legislature patronizes ihe 

 county agricultural societies of that Sla'e by an. 

 annual appropriation equal lo the income of ' 

 permanent funds invested within the county for' 1 

 a like purpose: the income of llie Essex sociely ' 

 from the two soirees, according to the statement 

 of the treasurer, exceeds one thousand dollars 

 to be annually paid in premiums wilh the de- 

 fraying of incidental expenses. The sum of' 

 .?741 25 was awarded in premiums for llie year 

 1848. Besides rewards lor the best farm pro-' ; ' 

 ducts and improvements, and for various manu- 

 factures, the Essex Sociely awarded premiums 

 for the best written essays of three gentlemen* 

 on different subjects. From the essay of Mi: 

 Temple Cutler of Hamilton, on ihe improvement 

 of Wet Meadows and Swamp Lands, we extract 

 a portion which will be of interest as a guide to 

 ihe farmer who, for the want of accurate iufor- , 

 million, might misapply his labor: 



RECLAMATION OF LOW LANDS. 



The fust great and important point to be at- 

 tended to, is thorough draining ; ihis is the great 

 desideratum, — no one may expect complete suc- 

 cess in attempting to reclaim wet, or hog mea- 

 dows, or swamps, without first sufficiently drain- 

 ing [hem ; and unless this is practicable, no one-' 

 should wilh confidence attempt Ihe enterprise. 

 It is on this point many have failed of success. 

 They may, indeed, for one or two years, obtain 

 a tolerable crop, but laud not fully drained, even 

 with all its top-dressings of gra.el, id' loam, of 

 soil, or of good manure, will soon go back lo iis 

 natural slate, proriut ing litlle besides its natural 

 wild grasses, and will be entirely unlit for any 

 kind of cultivation. 'Ihe first great object then 

 should be lo ascertain if llie laiiriiu view can bo 

 drained: there is not much land, that may not 

 be well drained, if right measures are taken ; 

 but the draining of sume pieces of meadow is 

 lirr more expensive than others, and this should 

 he the first item of expense, lo he taken into iho 

 calculation, and in general the first operation to 

 be performed. 



If there is a fall sufficient for water to run, no 

 one need hestitale lo commence ihe operation of 

 draining. If ihe growth is trees, they are not 

 thrifty while it remains flowed, or in its quagmire 

 stale, anil such land is not profitable for a growth 

 of fuel ; the trees must he taken off root and 

 branch, and this is more easily performed oil 

 peat ground than some may be aware. The 

 roots of some kinds of trees, and generally all 

 kinds on such land, do not run deep, but spiead 

 on the surface. Cutting off a IV.w roots at a dis- 

 tance from the body by a stroke or two of ihe 

 axe, and affixing a rope near the top lo sway 

 them over, one man cutting such roots as seem 

 to hold on, in a few moments a tree may be 

 brought to ihe ground, wilh a thin sheet of ihe 

 lop of the soil turned op. The tree may then 

 be easily managed, and freed from most of llie 

 soil attached to the roois. Some practice cut- 

 ling the trees down near the ground, and then 

 removing ihe slumps by various ingenious expe- 

 dients, or with machines made for thai purpose. 





