166 



&l)c Satinet's ittontljlu Visitor. 



fall breaking up. If the surface plough has 

 turned the sward to the depth of eight inches, 

 compost manures spread over the surface may 

 he ploughed with a light plough to the depth of 

 four or five inches without disturbing the turf 

 and thus mixing the manures with the soil. 

 Sometimes, where the soil is heavy and adhesive 

 from a clny or limestone mixture, harrowing in 

 the manures after they are spread, will he suffi- 

 cient. With a deep turf completely turned un- 

 der, and with compost in which the seeds of 

 weeds have been destroyed by alkali, in land 

 having neither hard pan or rocks, the cultivation 

 is easy and beautiful, requiring frequently not 

 half the labor of the common breaking up where 

 the turf, under the " cut and cover " system, is 

 broken upon the surface 1 . 



Too much of stimulating manures may he ap- 

 plied to some lands: crops may fail from the 

 mere vegetable luxuriance superinduce.) by such 

 application. Often in superficial ploughing, such 

 as some farmers adopt on light lands for feat' of 

 leaching away the strength of their manures, the 

 influence of the sun without frequent rains will 

 make of high manuring an injury instead of a 

 benefit. The strength of the manures is lost, 

 not by leaching, but by the heat of the sun 

 drawing the ammonia away in the surrounding 

 atmosphere. Deep ploughing will give value to 

 an increased quantity of manures which shallow 

 ploughing will not bear. The quantity of ma- 

 nures that may be profitably applied will be as 

 various as the nature of the soil on which they 

 are used. Some soils require more— others re- 

 quire less. Each field or acre requires a differ- 

 ent aliment as it differs from other grounds. No 

 admixture of soils is in all cases the same: ma- 

 nures of course will not always operate alike, 

 nor can they always be used in equal quantities to 

 the same advantage. Land esteemed very poor 

 will of course require more to make it rich than 

 land considered very good : a rich alluvion is 

 chemically better prepared for immediate pro- 

 duction than a poor sandy pine plain. The lat- 

 tor will require more stimulants, and after all 

 may not give an equal crop. The transition 

 from poor to rich lands, in our opinion, requires 

 much less effort and expense than the generally 

 received opinion. 



We have not, as we should have had if we had 

 been able as in the first twenty-five years of fol- 

 lowing our trade by personal labor in and about 

 the printing office, complete files of the Farmer's 

 Monthly Visitor for the whole term of its eleven 

 years' publication. A few copies of the three 

 first volumes bound have been preserved. 



Such a "brief summary " as Doctor Dewey 

 might furnish from other agricultural papers, 

 and especially from that excellent monthly jour- 

 nal, the Albany Cultivator, would contribute 

 greatly to the value of our humble monthly 

 sheet. If avocations, part of which are practical 

 in personal superintendence of agricultural im- 

 provements, did not consume much of our time, 

 we might perhaps of our own freewill and ac- 

 cord give a greater value and variety to the Visi- 

 tor than our efforts have heretofore given it. 



In conclusion of the answers to our Vermont 

 correspondent, we have no recollection of a 

 depth greater in subsoil movement, than that 

 of the celebrated William Cobbett, who, while a 

 resident on Long Island in New York, more than 

 forty years ago, wrote his work on Gardening: in 

 that he described the trenching or stirring of the 

 land we think to the depth of two or three feet ; 



but his method was to reserve the surface of the 

 turned up ground to be replaced upon the top 

 after the ground was moved by the shovel or 

 spade. Of the value of this deep garden trench- 

 ing at the late Essex county exhibition in Massa- 

 chusetts, Col. M. P. Wilder and other gentlemen 

 bore testimony in confirmation of our doctrine 

 in relation to subsoiling. 



New Hampshire Annual Register. 



We are indebted to Mr. Lyon for a copy of the 

 New Hampshire Annual Register for the year 

 1850. It is executed in a beauty of typography 

 and letter press priming, and upon paper, which 

 strikingly show how much our art has improved 

 in the last forty years. While a boy in a print- 

 ing office at Amherst, the hand that writes this 

 notice set the types of the principal part of the 

 New Hampshire Register for the year 1804 in 

 the fall of the previous year. The type used 

 was Scotch long primer, then recently procured 

 ibr the first publication of the Farmer's Cabinet: 

 the paper, the best that could then be procured, 

 was of the rough grain and water-marks made by 

 the hand process, such as will be recognized in 

 files of the newspapers of highest repute in that 

 time. No sheet at that time coul-d be printed on 

 any known press larger than what is denomina- 

 ted small royal ; and good printing required the 

 "stiff pull" of a stout man with the moving of 

 the stone under the platten so as to cover 

 the exposed side of the sheet with a double 

 pull. Two hundred and fifty half sheets in 

 the hour was the full work of two hands at the 

 press. Now the process of printing has been so 

 improved that, without hands other than to lay 

 the paper on, presses are made to turn off one 

 thousand to ten thousand copies of an hour! 

 Mr. Lyon has done a great service to the history 

 of public men and events in this State by giving 

 twenty pages of his beautiful Register for 1850 

 to the purpose of rescuing and placing on record 

 the names and residence of the earlier Council- 

 lors and Senators under the State government : 

 many of these lists had never before appeared 

 in print. It is to the credit of our State that in 

 every year during the last half century, a Regis- 

 ter of its officers and institutions, together with 

 a calendar of the principal United States officers j 

 has been published. The preservation of this 

 little annual (of ten times the value of some of 

 the annuals costing ten times as much) will fur 

 nish the best material for an accurate history of 

 the State. The best encouragement is due to 

 the industry and enterprise of the compiler and 

 publisher: no one can grudge twenty-five cents 

 as the price of a book so valuable. 



Ages of the Presidents. 



The following have been the ages of the 

 Presidents of the United States, at the time of 

 their election to the executive chair: — 



Ages. Ages. 



1. Washington, 57 7. Jackson, 61 



2. John Adams, 61 8. Van Buren, 54 



3. Jefferson, 57 9. Harrison, 67 



4. Madison, 57 10. Tvler, 50 



5. Monroe, 57 11. Polk, 49 



6. John Q. Adams, 57 12. Taylor, 64 

 The average of the above ages is about 574 



years, and it is a curious circumstance that five 

 of our twelve Presidents have been of the age 

 of 57 at the time of their election. Harrison 

 was the oldest of the Presidents, and Polk the 

 youngest, when elected. 



The latest way to pop the question we have 

 heard of is to ask the fair lady " if you shall 

 have the pleasure of seeing her at the Minister's." 



For the Farmer's Monthly Visitor. 

 Influence ol Farming on Morals. 

 Mr. Editor : Of all the useful kinds of em- 

 ployment followed for a living by men, that bus- 

 iness which has the greatest care for the morals 

 and welfare of a community, should be thought 

 the most important. Now we do not intend to 

 say that any one business, strictly speaking, 

 should be thought more of than another. Yet 

 if there is any preference to be given, we think 

 candidly that preference should he given in favor 

 of agriculture. And while we may claim no 

 more for agriculture than any other men do for 

 their employment, yet we think that it is equally 

 as important, and more useful, than most voca- 

 tions. In the open country and in agricultural 

 communities are generally found better order, 

 morals and society than are often found in large 

 cities and in manufacturing towns. That there 

 are sometimes, and perhaps often found, farmers 

 who are vicious in their habits and dishonest in 

 their dealings with their fellow-men, may be 

 true. Since the great temperance reformation 

 came up, the habits of farmers as well as of eve- 

 ry other class of men, have greatly changed for 

 the better. The time was not many years ago 

 when alcoholic drinks were thought to be neces- 

 sary anil useful in the hay and harvest field. 

 But time has wrought a great change in this 

 matter, and now only a few of the hardened and 

 obstinate will persist in their use. Cider-making 

 and drinking, we believe, has mostly been con- 

 fined to New England and New Jersey. We are 

 not aware that cider-making or drinking was 

 ever practised much west of the Hudson river. 

 At the West when cider-drinking was out of 

 fashion, young orchards were just being set out, 

 and they were of course grafted for market fruit. 

 But in New England, apple orchards have been 

 growing for a century and a half, and they bore 

 mostly natural fruir, just fit for cider, and, as the 

 farmer supposed, for nothing else. We well re- 

 collect twenty and twenty-five years ago, when 

 we were but a boy, that two-thirds of the farm- 

 ers time in the fall of the year was spent in gath- 

 ering apples and making cider. This was time 

 worse than thrown away to the neglect of other 

 and more important crops, and well do we re- 

 member of handling frosty apples in cold morn- 

 ings till we had wished the cider was all in 



well, no matter where. Then of course the 

 farmer must fill his cellar full of cider, and the 

 remainder must be carried to the " still," to be 

 made into cider brandy, or what is known in 

 some parts of old Connecticut, by the name of 

 " Wiuk'em." It was not an uncommon thing in 

 many towns for almost every farmer, not only to 

 have his cider-mill, hut also to have one of these 

 " Wink'em mills" on his farm. And at this day 

 and age, we are sorry to say, that in this town a 

 number of these " mills" are in operation, where 

 froii early autumn till late in the spring the 

 smoke of the "still" may be seen. In this way is 

 it allowed to give off fumes of poison and death, 

 to be scattered wholesale and retail through the 

 community at large. Now there are some farm- 

 ers engaged in this business who claim to he 

 candid and moral men. And in conscience we 

 ask them, if they think by pursuing it, they are 

 sustaining good order, and are improving the 

 morals of the community in which they live. If 

 not, then let them abandon the business at once, 

 and come to a stand that not a single article of 

 production shall be sold off their farms to he 

 converted into alcoholic drinks. We know well 

 that there is no interest which governs mankind 



