162 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



July 



a. passion." Perhaps it mig^ht better have been said, 

 that the love of nature was 



" born in him, wilh him so intense. 



It was his very spirit, not a sense." 



Let every farmer who woiilJ make the most of the 

 good that surrounds him — 



" Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, antl good in every thing" — 

 buy Wordsworth's poems. 



Prices of our Agriculturai, Products. ^ — The 



late rise in the price of corn and flour is stimulated 

 by the recent deninnd for shipment to England ; but 

 as the late ri.'ie in England is owing to a present 

 short supply from the Baltic and the Black sea, and 

 to the fear of the effect of present bad weather on 

 growing crops ; a subsequent decline, on the return 

 of fair weather and increased imports, may be antici- 

 pated. There are, however, other causes wliich must 

 keep up prices in the United States until after the 

 next harvest. The wheat crop of great wheat-grow- 

 ing Ohio was a failure last year, while the home de- 

 mand, increased by immigration, has been unprece- 

 dented. Strange to .say, the great valley of the 

 Mississippi is now importing bread-stuffs from -the 

 lakes, through tlie Cliioago canal and the circuitous 

 Illinois River. The St. Louis Repub. says that 

 they are now receiving by that route, flour, wheat, 

 corn, oats, barley, and potatoes. This does not look 

 as though the farmers of the great west were suffer- 

 ing very much just now for the want of a home mar- 

 ket. The farmers of our country are under great 

 obligations to Sir Robert Peel, under whose min- 

 i>try the British government was induced to make 

 such a concession to free trade as to admit .American 

 provisions, butter, cheese, lard, &tc., into Groat Britain 

 under very low duties. The subsequent abrogation 

 of the sliding scale of corn law duties, whieli ta.xed 

 foreign corn out of the market, unless its home cost 

 approached famine prices, has created a powerful 

 opposition to free trade in corn, by the so called 

 "landeil interest" of Great Britain. 'Tis hard for 

 the aristocratic landlord to retrench in his great and 

 multiform expenses and lu.xurious style of living : 

 and although tlie farmer tenant may consent to give 

 up his bottle of port with his dinner, lie can not yet 

 dispense with his horse and gig. Hence there is 

 left to liim )io other way of paying his rent under the 

 present prices, but to pinch his farm laborers in their 

 wages to a stipend that has already driven them to 

 the brink of starvation ! Some benevolent writers 

 ill I'higland and Scotland have endeavored to show 

 tlie landlord how mucli it is to his interest to give the 

 farmer more liberal c ,<fenants, and to teach the far- 

 mer how he may live and feed his working force 

 under such covenants, with the adoption of better 

 economy and a higher and better mode of farming. 

 Against Mr. Cairo, one of these writers, Blackwood, 

 (now the landlord's exponent.) in the April number 

 of that magazine, comes out with an elaborately furi- 

 ous article, entitled "Caird's high farming liarrowed." 

 I have not seen Mr. CAinn's pamphlet, but if we may 

 judge from the floundering of the great Philistine, 

 little David must have struck at his life. Bv a curi- 

 ous coincidence in the theory of political economy, 

 we on this side the Atlantic, and Blackwood on the 

 other, arrive at the .«amo conclusion ; — while we urge 

 lliat our well paid operatives cau not compete wiili 

 the half paid laborers of England, Blackwood says 

 that the "British farmer who pays taxes, can not 



compete with the foreign serf who pays no ta.ves at 

 all." In both cases we have left to us the lamentable 

 conclusion, that the aigument aims an unerring shaft 

 at God's poor, in whatever hemisphere their lot »iay 

 be cast, just as though they had no right in the good 

 things of this world of ours ! 



The Progress of Rural Ta.ste. — A sterling 

 farmer, who can both say and do, writes in the Sen- 

 eca Observer, that on a visit to his neighbor, last 

 week, he was "surprised to see the ground spaded 

 up in front of the house, and laid out in regular beds 

 for flowers and shrubs." This space, he says, "had 

 ever before been covered witli plantains, sorrel, and 

 other unsightly w-eeds." But what a wet blanket the 

 "old farmer" throws on our imagination, now about 

 to invest the fair inmates of that house with a true 

 love and enthusiasm for flowers, when lie tells us 

 that the paltry dollars, the premium offered by our 

 county society for the best boquet, gave the primary 

 impulse to this ever to be praised reform. But, as the 

 Methodists say, a good tune is none the worse for 

 having originated with the devil. One word more 

 in relation to our Seneca county premium for flowers. 

 I have been asked by more than one of the single 

 fair, whose ages are on the shady side of five and 

 twenty, why the prizes are thus invidiously offered 

 only to those girls who have the good fortune to be 

 oil the sunny side of that now climacteric number. 

 Did the committee think that she who could pass her 

 2.5th birth-day without appropriating a husband, 

 w'ould be alike insensible to the beauties of that floral 

 creation which heirs not the grossness of flesh and 

 blood 1 If they do, I confess that all my experience 

 leads to the very opposite concliisio'i. 



A REMEDY FOE I3JI 3a.lN :3, 



Messrs. Editors : — 1 am sorry to hear your corres- 

 pondent "VV. T." condemn your most valuable paper 

 because it is too scientific, or because you use terms 

 which lie can not understand ; and I hope you will 

 not restrain your scientific analyses because a ver^ 

 few of your readers do not ii idorstand the phrases 

 which you necessarily use : and f dare assert that 

 those who can justly claim the proud title of a farmer, 

 will, if they meet with a term which they can not 

 comprehend, study out the meaning, iii.steaJ of .sit- 

 ting down and bewailing tlieir ignorance. 



" W. T." seems to think that there are a great 

 number of your readers wdio do not understand "the 

 phrases you use in analysing soils :" and if such be 

 the fact, it is a disease, for which I wish to propose 

 a remedy. It is not a year since I comfuoiiced read- 

 ing your paper, and at that time I was in the same 

 dilemma which my friend seems to bo in ; but I was 

 ashamed eitlier t;) present my ignorance before the 

 public as some have done, or to keep it secret, and 

 was incited to the study of chemistry, which I set 

 myself about with all difligonce. Now, I wou'd say 

 to my brother reader, and to all who do not unlor- 

 stand their profession, "go and do likewise." 



Again : " VV. T." ask.«, " What will our grand- 

 children think, when looking into a volume of the 

 Genesee Farmer they soe an adverti.-;ement with bohis 

 and bottles V I would say, in answer, that if they 

 should see his article, while perusing the Parmer, 

 they would laugh at his folly, and rejoice in their 

 superiority over their ancestor. B. L. N. — .Mi'li 

 son Co., JV. Y. 



