1847. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



ir 



Letter from Seneca Count)'. 



Dr. Lee : — I have heard two of your subscri- 

 bers speak in high commendation of your criticism 

 on Dr. RoDGERs' agricultural school book. It is 

 a blessed thing that something can stir up farmers 

 to a state of mental activity. Had Dr. Rodgers 

 published a better book, it might have fallen still- 

 born from the press ; but the moment the farmers 

 are told that a part of his compilation is made 

 from "authers who wrote before analytical chem- 

 istry was born," they become alive to the prof- 

 fered indignity Hence Dr. R. carries off the 

 palm for having done more to jostle our farmers 

 into a living sense of the dignity of their calling, 

 than a hundred Liebigs or Johnstons could 

 have done. 



Out of the thousands of adult farmers who deal 

 in our village, I believe I got, last year, 44 sub- 

 •ssriters to the Genesee Farmer. If I was asked 

 to give the reason why so few farmers read, I 

 should reply that mental industry seems to be 

 rare among them, in proportion as physical indus- 

 try predominates. The cause is obvious : their 

 early physical training is perfect, while their 

 early mental instruction has too often been bar- 

 barous in the extreme. A district school teacher 

 is hired to teach farmers sons, not for his ability 

 to instruct, but for the low wages he consents to 

 receive. Before the boy can half spell, he com- 

 mences reading. He is immediately taught 

 -enough of arithmetic to add a column of figure?, 

 divide, and subtract, when his school education 

 is finished. I am proud to say that there are 

 ■hundreds of farmers sons who, impelled by the 

 ■afflatus within them, subsequently overcome the 

 ■deficienc'es of their wretched school learning, 

 by patient study. Such men are the subscribers 

 to agricultural papers — they are the k\v who 

 feel, with the poet, that 



"Ignorance is sin" — not bliss. 

 I notice that our friend Bateham, of the Ohio 

 Cultivator, plows his little 10 acre farm 16 inches 

 ■ deep. Such practice ought to immortalize an 

 • editor of an agricultural paper. He Is right in 

 calling his a large farm ; with such a subsoil as 

 is common in Western N. Y. and Ohio, a farm 

 should not be estimated by its surface only. — 

 With a like subsoil New England would hardly 

 have been as manufacturing as she now is. I well 

 remember with what reluctance the New-Eng- 

 landers were compelled, by embargo, non-inter- 

 course, and war, to abandon the Ocean and go to 

 manufacturing. As often as I travel over our all 

 alluvial Seneca, I am struck with the idea of the 

 amount of labor which has been expended in 

 clearing and fencing the land, then so little ad- 

 vantage taken by the farmer of so great an outlay 

 — fences rotting around fields scarcely tilled. — 

 I instinctively ask the farmer the cause of this 

 waste of capital. His reply is, generally, " My 

 sons and daughters have gone west, and I can't 



afford to hire help." Such is life among farmers 

 living on the finest soil ever warmed by the 

 sun's rays. The young of both sexes foolishly 

 give up such a birth-right, for a bare-foot exist- 

 ence in the western wilderness — amid privation^ 

 and toil, and sickness — where pork is the great- 

 est luxury, and a log-house raising the most exci- 

 ting recreation. It has been said that it is much 

 easier for man to retrogade to barbarism, than to 

 progress in civilization. Do we need further 

 proofs of the fact ? S. W. 



Waterloo, December, 1846. 



Buckwheat, 



Is the grain of the Polygonum fagopyruniy amt 

 and is said to be a native of Persia. It is usually 

 sown on poor land, although, like other cultiva- 

 ted plants, it does best on a good soil with good 

 culture. Its blossoms yield considerable food 

 for bees, although the honey thus obtained is in- 

 ferior to that made from clover. Buckwheat 

 meal or flour is much used in some sections of 

 the United States for making griddle cakes. The 

 seeds of this plant contain 50 per cent, of starch, 

 and IJ per cent, of earthy matter. It is often 

 sown and the crop plowed in, to fertilize poor 

 land. From one to two bushels of seed are put 

 on an acre. 



Figure a represents the Polygonum fagopyrum 

 — b the Polygonum tartaricum. 



Yankee Enterprize. — The Traveller says 

 a New Hampshire man was in Boston the other 

 day with a few stockings for sals — only five hun- 

 dred dozen pairs — being about half of his fall 

 supply. It seems this gentleman is concerned 

 in a cotton yarn factory, in a siiall town in the 

 inferior of New Hampshire. The yarn is sent 

 out to all the farmer's families far and near, 

 and wrought into stockings, and the farm- 

 ers wives and children are paid for their labor in 

 part or entirely with goods from the store, and 

 the stockings are then brought by the hundred 

 dozen to our city for sale. This is but one speci- 

 men out of a thousand of the versatility of 

 Yankee traders. 



