294 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



to the first purchaser, or an action commenced against 

 him, he has his claim on the first seller, and may 

 demand of him not only the price of the horse, or 

 the difference in value, but every expense that may 

 have been incurred. AVhen an action is brought, the 

 lawsuit is usvially very intricate ; a fair trial of the 

 horse is allowed, and a certain tinie specified : but it 

 is not always easy to ascertain whether the fault lies 

 with the horse or his rider, and sometimes the dealer, 

 as well as the buyer, is hardly used. If the horse is 

 detained after the specified time of trial, he is sup- 

 posed to be sold. 



" In London, and in most great tov.nrs, there are 

 repositories for the periodical sale of horses by auc- 

 tion. They are of great convenience to the seller, 

 who can at once get rid of a horse with which he 

 wishes to part, without waiting month after month 

 before he obtains a purchaser, and who is relieved 

 from the fear of having the horse returned on ac- 

 count of breach of the warranty ; because in these 

 places only two days are allowed for the trial, and, 

 if the horse is not returned within that period, he 

 cannot be returned afterward. They are also ct)n- 

 venient to the purchaser, who can thus find a horse 

 that will suit him, and by which, from this restric- 

 tion as to the returning the animal, he may, perhaps, 

 obtain twenty or thirty per cent, below the dealer's 

 prices. But although an auction may seem to offer 

 a fair open competition, there is no place at Avhich it 

 is more necessary for a person not much accustomed 

 to horses to take with him an experienced friend, 

 heedless of the observations or manoeuvres of the 

 bystanders, the exaggerated commendations of som'e 

 horses, and the thousand faults found with others. 

 There are always numerous groups of low dealers, 

 copers and chanters, whose business it is to delude 

 and deceive." 



TOLLS ON MANURES- 



Much would be added to the wealth of our coun- 

 try if turni)ik.e companies would permit manures to 

 pass over their roads Avithout the payment of toll ; 

 and when the transportation of increased production 

 is taken into account, the companies themselves 

 would be the gainers by the reform. Every induce- 

 ment should be offered to farmers calculated to make 

 a market for the refuse of factories, &c., which are 

 now lost, but might be rendered productive of real 

 wealth to the country, if brought into use. Untold 

 amounts of waste at the salt works of our state, 

 would be used as manures, if the canal toll on this 

 article, when required as manure, could be lessened 

 80 as to deliver the dirty or unmerchantable salt 

 along the line of the Hudson River. The English 

 farmers pay neither tolls nor duty on salt for agricul- 

 tural purposes, and the wealth of the nation has in 

 Consequence been permanently increased to a much 

 larger amount than all the duties ever collected on 

 salt, under the old law. One hundred thousand 

 dollars worth of dirty salt could be sold annually at 

 the city of New York for twelve and a half cents 

 per bushel, which is now wasted for want of a prac- 

 ticable market, and the increased annual product 

 in vegetable results, would be many times that 

 amount. — Worldng Farmer. 



DO WELL WHAT YOU ATTEMPT. 



Thoroughness with the agriculturist as well as 

 with the student, is the only true rule. Although 

 perfection is to be expected but rarely, yet it shoirid 

 be our constant endeavor to approximate the grand 

 point of ultimate and radical completeness, and bv 

 every successive step in our progress to render that 

 point less difficult and less remote. Carelessness, 



when it attains the inveteracy of a confirmed habit, 

 hke any other evil, grasps us with a controlling force, 



— its power and intensity of deteriorating and ren- 

 dering a bad and conderanable practice worse, in- 

 creasing in proportion as it is indulged. In farming, 

 every step taken, every act accomplished in the rou- 

 tine, is to be contemplated as a beginning. We must 

 plough before we plant ; and avc must weed before 

 we harvest ; and the weeding of one crop, and its re- 

 moval from the field, is a labor preparatory to the 

 production and maturation of unnumbered crops 

 which, in succession, are to spring from the same 

 soil, and remunerate, in distant futurity, it may be, 

 the laborer for his annual toil. 



In the cultivation of arable lands devoted to 

 weeded crops, how essential is this principle of 

 thoroughness, and strikingly is its necessity dis- 

 played ! Weeds, especially those of indigenous 

 kinds, are gross feeders, taking from the nutritive 

 properties of the soil a far greater per cent, in pro- 

 portion to their bulk, than the most exhausting 

 cultivated crops ; yet weeds abound ; they fiaunt 

 and luxuriate and multiply, annually, in almost 

 every field. It was not many years since, that the 

 " Canada Thistle " was introduced into the gardens 

 of New England as an ornamental production! It 

 was cherished and stimulated and admii-ed till, wax- 

 ing mighty, it sent forth its pestiferous germs from 

 the garden and the parterre to the fields, the pas- 

 tures and the road-sides, and, finally, like plagues of 

 Egypt, overran and devoured, literally in one sense, 



— and a most emphatic one, — " the fatness of the 

 land." 



A few seeds of the dock are dropped, fortuitoiisly, 

 in some untilled corner, or out of the way place, and 

 produce plants : yet the owner of the soil sees no 

 imperative necessity for immediately destroying 

 them ; they stand not in his way at present. But 

 the time will come, should he live, when their power 

 will be felt. The progeny of evil multiplies rapidly ; 

 and, in due time, the soil all around will be infested 

 and overrun, till what might have been effected by a 

 single stroke of the hoe, demands, for its completion, 

 the labor of many years, of many anxious hours and 

 painful toils. 



In draining and enclosing lands, it is too often 

 that the operator consults present convenience rather 

 than future profit ; all the details are imperfectly de- 

 signed and arranged; nothing is thorough or sub- 

 stantial. Instead of going to work in the right way, 

 and expending his money to the best advantage, by 

 investing every dollar in a permanent " improve- 

 ment," he expends often a large part of his immedi- 

 ately available resources in the construction of mere 

 " gossamer work " — drains that answer no purpose 

 of practical utility, and fences that a twelvemonth 

 will prostrate, or the feeblest zephyr destroy. Such 

 conduct becomes not the liberal-minded and enlight- 

 ened farmer ; it is a part of the " penny wise and 

 pound foolish policy," which, by every judicious 

 person who rightly appreciates his true interests, will 

 be rejected and despised. Young beginners, and 

 those who are ambitious of making a great display 

 with circumscribed means, are too often cajoled into 

 its adoption ; but a few years' experience will be 

 generally sufficient to correct the evil; its burdens 

 and entailments of tod and expense prove, com- 

 monly, an " open sesame " to the proper course, and 

 their practice is corrected and reformed. In manur- 

 ing lands, also, we should look more to distant re- 

 sults than to present profits. A piece of soil, thor- 

 oughly enriched, is a lasting treasure. Like a de- 

 posit in a solvent bank, it pays annual dividends, and 

 by a judicious course of management will improve 

 rather than deteriorate for years. In this depart- 

 ment of farming, more than in any other, probably, 

 the beneficial effects of thoroughness are convin- 

 cingly displayed. — Germanlown Telegraph. 



