34 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



will probably j^laii and labor more persistently for the thrift 

 of his stock than the comfort of his household. A green, 

 well-shaved lawn in front of the farm-house, where the chil- 

 dren can romp and play, and the wife can cultivate a few 

 tlowers, is one of the rights on which every woman should 

 insist. 



Another suggestion as to the site of the farm-house is, that 

 it should be on some elevation, above the fogs and miasms of 

 the valley, and commanding a pleasant, if not extensive look- 

 out. We have seen so many prairie farm-houses squatted in 

 the mud that we have learned to prize the high and dry sites 

 which are scattered so profusely through New England, and 

 we have often wondered that, with such a site on almost every 

 farm, so many houses are built in low, damp, unhealthy situ- 

 ations. The reason probably is, that the owners have the im- 

 pression that- the elevated site must be bleak and cold. The 

 winds may indeed strike the house on the hill with some force, 

 but as for the cold, it is always colder in the valley, of a still 

 night, than on the hill. Corn is frost-b tten later in the spring 

 and earlier in the fall in the Housatonic Valley, than on the 

 elevated and dry sites which overlook it. We say dry sites, 

 for not every elevation is fiee from the damp, chilling and un- 

 healthy influences which emanate from marshes. We find 

 cold muck-swamps as frequently on the hills as in the valley, 

 and in their neighborhood we may look for early frosts and 

 malarial fevers. 



Another suggestion is, that every farm-house be built where 

 the sun shines for the most hours of each day, and the most 

 days of each year. There is life in sunshine, and he is not 

 wise who places his house where the sun does not rise till late 

 in the morning, and sets early in the evening, or where, dur- 

 ing the whole day, it is rendered dark and dismal by dense 

 foliage. Trees have their uses, but it was never the design 

 of Providence that man should live in a forest. Even the 

 wild beasts, who make their home there, contrive to take a 

 frequent sun-bath. On the sheltered, sunny side of some 

 ledge of rocks, or on the southern slope of some hill where 

 the rays of the sun fall most perpendicularly, there the forest- 

 born beasts most do congregate. The nimble squirrel climbs 

 to the sunlight on the limb of some tree, and there takes his 



