74 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



ercd ill the previous season, so that -when sugar time 

 comes, half the fire may not bo required to fry away 

 the sap outside the kettles. A one-horse power is 

 used for gathering, and when the " run" is over, the 

 buckets, &c., are carefully stowed away in an upper 

 loft, ready for the " bush " again on return of spring. 

 It has been recommended to plug the trees, to facil- 

 itate the healing process. I have tried it one or two 

 years, and the effect was evidently bad, and I long 

 since abandoned it. But not to protract these re- 

 marks : let those who have not yet drawn any por- 

 tion of their sugar from the maple, be assured that 

 this home-made luxury is not less sweet, albeit there 

 may be less sweat in the manufacture of it, than in the 

 more common product of the cane. 



LEGISLATION FOR AGRICULTURE. 



From the able address of Lewis F. Allen, Esq., 

 delivered before the New York State Agricultural 

 Society, January, 1849, we select the following judi- 

 cious remarks, which are worthy the particular at- 

 tention of legislators and farmers generally : — 



Agricultural education should attract largely 

 your attention ; and it is a subject which will bear a 

 little examination. The pittance of eight thousand 

 dollars a year is now doled out of your public treas- 

 ury, a bare recognition only of the importance and 

 value of agricultural associations, of Avhich the sti- 

 pend of seven hundred dollars is paid to your soci- 

 ety. To call this state bounty, which we in courtesy 

 do, is little better than mockery. Forty thousand 

 dollars a year would now be less, compared with the 

 wealth and resources of the state, than ten thousand 

 dollars in 1819. Why, gentlemen, the annual appro- 

 priations to agricultural advancement from the state 

 treasury, is less than that given to three of your col- 

 leges, where less than two hundred students yearly 

 graduate. Appro2:)riations amounting to more than 

 live hundred thousand dollars of public money have 

 been made by law for the endowment of colleges ; 

 and yoiir literature fund is still annually drawn upon 

 to the amount of fifteen thousand dollars in contrib- 

 uting to their siipport, while their halls remain a 

 sealed book to him who looks only to agriculture as 

 the profession of his life ; and of the thousands who 

 there receive the bounty of the state in aid of theii- 

 education, not a tithe of them, in the course of their 

 lives, add a dollar to the physical or productive 

 wealth of the country. The common school, or the 

 village academy, is the only institution where the 

 young farmer gains admittance ; and even there, as 

 at present constituted, he hardly acquires an idea of 

 the rudest elements of his future profession, or of 

 those studies which properly belong to it. 



These remarks are not made in a querulous or 

 fault-finding temper. It is right that we have col- 

 leges and academies for the few Avho aspire to the 

 higher wallts of professional or scientifie life, as well 

 as common schools for the million. No state can 

 be well or wisely constituted without them, and I 

 would not abate one jot or tittle from the wholesome 

 support which a broad and liberal system of educa- 

 tion demands. But we should claim, and insist, that 

 departments devoted to agricultural teaching, or to 

 the development of agricultural science, should be 

 established, either as branches of our seats of learn- 

 ing, or as independent institutions. Why should 

 not the farmer be edvicated to the top of his faculties, 

 as well as those who select what arc termed the 

 learned professions as their pursuit ? If our sons 

 cannot be taught the education they seek in the col- 

 leges, — and there are well-grounded doubts of this 

 fact from the moral malaria too often existing within 

 and around them, — institvitions for their sole educa- 

 tion should be aided, or erected, and endowed by the 



state. This subject has been annually debated in 

 your meetings for years past ; but influenced by a 

 strange timidity, no decided action beyond a fonnal 

 and altogether harmless expression of opinion has 

 been effected. I beseech you, gentlemen, to look at 

 this matter. The real and personal property of this 

 state is more than one thousand millions of dolLars. 

 Nominally, in the assessors' returns, it is rated at less 

 than six hundi-ed and fifty millions. In these re- 

 turns, it is notorious that real estate is not assessed 

 at over two thirds its real value, and it is safe to say, 

 that owing to the imperfect and partial system of 

 taxation, not one half the personal property of the 

 state, comparatively little of which is held by the 

 farmer, is taxed at all ; and in its practical operation, 

 agricultural capital jDays two to one over that devoted 

 to other fiurposes. Yet with all this burden on its 

 back, the farming interest either stands back from 

 your halls of legislation abashed, although nominally 

 rei:)rcsented there by its members ; or if, plucking a 

 momentary courage by the congregation of its num- 

 bers on an occasion like the present, it literally 

 shrinks away, cither ashamed to ask its rights, or, 

 if asking, couched in such a subdued tone of humil- 

 ity, that the legislature scarce believe you in earnest. 

 This, gentlemen, is yoiu- attitude before the tempo- 

 rary power which you create to govern you ! Con- 

 trast it with the conduct of those who seek a difl'er- 

 ent kind of favor at its hands. Watch the thou- 

 sands of applicants for corjDorate and exclusive priv- 

 ileges, and state patronage, who have in times past 

 besieged your halls of legislation. With what confi- 

 dence they approach and lay siege to the law-making 

 power ! and how like " sturdy beggars " thej' perse- 

 vere, till, right or wrong, theii- importunities ape 

 granted ! And in parenthesis I might continue to 

 remark, that the history of our corporate legisla- 

 tion is monstrous. Some years by-gone, and bank- 

 ing charters were the only subject of moment before 

 these bodies ; and that legislator who did not go 

 home with more or less of the promised shares of a 

 successful application in his jDocket, was considered 

 as but a dull financier, or strongly suspected of hav- 

 ing what, in private life, is called — a conscience ! 

 In later time, it has been asserted that railroad cor- 

 porations have controlled your legislatures — ridden 

 into their seats by aid of free tickets ; and contempo- 

 rary with them, had we farmers caught the spirit of 

 the day, and adopted characteristic weapons of suc- 

 cess, each ■ one of us would have appeared with a 

 sheep on his back, or a truss of poultry at his elbow, 

 to lunch them into acquiescence ! 



ADVANTAGES OF THOROUGH DRAINING. 



Draining, as understood thii'ty years ago in Eng- 

 land, (and to this day witli us,) merely meant the 

 making of channels to carry oft' siu-face water, and 

 underground drains to dry bogs, or cut off springs. 

 It has now an entii-ely different meaning in the agri- 

 cultural world. Mr. Smith, of Dcanston, near Edin- 

 burgh, was among the first to practise and explain 

 thorough draining, as it is called. His system is, 

 that all land requii-es to be drained ; that the depth 

 of loam, or soil, containing the food of plants, seldom 

 exceeds a few inches, resting on a subsoil, or pan of 

 clay, or hard gravel, saturated with water. By mak- 

 ing drains from two and a half to five feet in depth, at 

 every twenty or thirty feet, the land becomes dry ; 

 air takes the place of water ; every shower, furnished 

 with a stock of ammonia, permeates the soil, and the 

 result is, that instead of a few inches there are as 

 many feet of fertile loam, the action of the atmosj^here 

 being sufficient of itself to produce the change, al- 

 though, to hasten the process, subsoil ploughing is 

 made part of the system. 



The change produced by the introduction of 



