NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



309 



e were happy to see new plans proposed 

 )• the benefit of the agricultural interest. — 

 jey would doubtless be attended with great 

 actical utility. Much has been done by the 

 1 fi rernment for the other interests of the com- 

 ■1(1 mity. Scientific, literary, and other institu- 

 ins have been munificently endowed and lib- 



H 



■■'« 



'; ally patronized ; while, till lately, very little 

 Wa| s been done for agriculture, and it is now 

 ieti oposed to withhold even that pittance. A 

 ■licy so short-sighted and narrow in its views 

 juld seriously injure the reputation which the 

 ite has acquired both at home and abroad, for 

 leJi :ing foremost in the great system of internal 

 fj iprovements, now rapidly extending through- 

 it the country. 



01 



xi 

 lag 



MUSTARD, HOW MIXED. 

 Boil a sufticient quantity of horse radish in 

 best white wine vinegar, add to it half as 

 uch mountain or good raisin wine, and a little 

 luble refined sugar ; then make it up to a 

 •oper consistency with the best unadulterated 

 urhara flour of mustard, stop it up close, and 

 will keep for years. Mustard thus made has 

 1 inconceivably fine spirit and flavor. Com- 

 on keeping mustard may be made by only 

 bstituting water for the vinegar, with or with- 

 it garlic, and a little salt. The flour of mus- 

 rd should be gradually mixed with the boiling 

 ater or vmegar, to a proper thickness, and 

 bbed perfectly smooth. 



HOW TO RAISE TURKIES. 



Plunge the young chick into a vessel of cold 

 ater, the hour, or if that cannot be, the day it 

 hatched. Force it to swallow one whole pep- 

 !r corn, then return it to its mother. From 

 at time it will become hardy and not fear the 

 Id. When young turkies begin to droop, es- 

 nine carefully the feathers on their rumps, 

 id you will find two or three, whose quill part 



filled with blood. Upon drawing these the 

 lick recovers, and after requires no more care 

 tan is bestowed on any other poultry. 



I injurious, but they left the resemblance of a 

 j female shape : the corset on the contrarv pre- 

 sents the waists as regularly round and untaper- 

 , ing as a white load keg. The olden stays 1 re- 

 member were laced with a silken siring, of the 

 size of the finest twine, but the corset requires 

 a cord equalling the bow string of a Kickapoo 

 Chief. The antiquated hoop was of formidable 

 expansion, and when first thrown upon the pub- 

 lic eye created no trivial sensation — but in it- 

 self it was perfectly harmless, there was no com- 

 pression about it ; and the lady abode as safely 

 within its ample circumference as the sentinel 

 in his box. Every dog will have, and every 

 fashion must have its day ; the reign of the 

 corset has endured about as long as the reign of 

 Bonaparte, and like the latter, fatal enough in 

 all conscience. I anticipate the happy period 

 when the fairest portion of the fair creation will 

 step forth unincumbered with slabs of walnut 

 and tiers of whalebone. The constitution of 

 our females must be excellent, to withstand in 

 any tolerable degree the terrible inflictions of 

 the corset eight long hours of every day, or 

 the horrible total of 178,200 minutes in one 

 year. No other animal could survive it. Take 

 the honest ox, and enclose his sides with hoop 

 poles, put an oaken plank beneath him, and gird 

 the whole with a bed-cord, and then demand of 

 him labor. He would labor indeed, but it would 

 be for breath. Splinter and belay a pig in the 

 same way, and a whine might be aspirated, but 

 it would be a whine of expiration. 



But I fear I am trespassing too violently on 

 your patience, and in pity to you conclude with 

 the old Caledonian motto, " Spero meliora." 

 Yours, G.\LEN. 



TO ALL r,'HOM IT MAY CO.VCERX. 

 CORSETS. 



Mrs. Deshang of Bethany in New Jersey, 

 as the mother of three amiable daughters 

 ighly accomplished and beautiful ; the young 

 idies have long been in the habit of lacing as 

 ght as any of their neighbors ; one has become 

 riite infirm and the other two evidently droop. 

 'he alarmed parent stated the situation of her 

 hildren to her old friend the venerable Dr. 

 -alen of Philadelphia, who soon after the re- 

 eipt of her note, forwarded the following reply. 



Madam — The case of your charming daugh- 

 srs affects me, and my whole experience may 

 e put in requisition to assist them ; that they 

 'ere healthy, robust, and fine children, I per- 

 jctly recollect, and that their healths are now 

 npaired may perhaps be solely ascribed to 

 lemselves. Fashion destroys more females 

 ban fevers. From a mistaken notion of better- 

 ig the best work of Heaven, the infatuated 

 lir risk health and even life itself. I deem the 

 orset of the present day to be a perfect en- 

 "ine of torture, and worthy the Inquisitions of 

 roa, and Rome, and infinitely worse than the 

 tays of time gone by. These last be sure were 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1823. 



TItc Fanncr^s and Gardener''s Remembrancer, 

 APRIL. 



Pruning Trees. — It is now, we believe, about 

 the right time to prune your fruit trees, and 

 such of your forest trees as it may be worth 

 while to subject to the operation. Col. Picker- 

 ing assures us that his " practice has been to 

 prune in the spring, beginning when the buds 

 have scarcely begun to swell ; and ending be- 

 fore the expansion of the leaves." That is, 

 commonly, in this climate, from about the 10th 

 of April to the middle of May. A writer in the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural Repository, vol. v, 

 p. 121 to 127, accuses N. E. farmers of some 

 very bad management with regard to this de- 

 partment of rural economy. He says " it is a 

 universal practice among the old farmers to 

 mount the tree with a hatchet or bill hook, and 

 hack off" any branch which is in a state of de- 

 cay, or which is misplaced, about six or eight 

 inches from its insertion, leaving a stump to rot, 

 and to operate as a conductor of the water, frost 

 and canker into the mother branch in which it 

 grew, or into the body of the tree according to 

 its situation. This was done originally from an 

 idea that if you cut close to the mother branch, 

 or to the body of the tree, the rot or canker 

 will sieze more readily on its trunk, than if cut 

 at a distance, and that the tree will decay the 

 sooner. This practice has been followed with- 

 out reflection, and without reason by many, but 

 the ercor is so obvious that any man of obser- 



vafion may see it yearly ; and any one who 

 doubts may satisfy himself in one season of the 

 incorrectness of the practice, by making his 

 experiments on a young free."' 



This writer advises the orchardist, when he 

 has fixed upon a limb to be lopped off, if it i^ 

 large and heavy, to cut first at some distance 

 from its insertion, to prevent its weight in fal- 

 ling from lacerating the bark of the shoulder, 

 whence your final cut is to be ; because this 

 leaves an opening for water to get under the 

 bark, and cannot easily be healed.* You may 

 now saw the stump close to the branch from 

 which it proceeds with safety; or if it be a por- 

 tion of a branch which is to be lopped ofl", the 

 cut should be down to a sound, healthy, lateral 

 branch, growing from the same limb ; or if the 

 limb to be cut off" proceeds from the body or 

 trunk of the tree, then it should be sawed close 

 to the shaft. The wood in all cases should be 

 smoothed ever, and the edges of the bark care- 

 fully pared with your knife or hatchet, so that 

 the water will run off" the wound. If the cut 

 be made on a side branch, it should be sawed 

 obliquely or slanting, so as to leave no dead 

 wood, or wood to die, and in all cases the cut 

 should be on a sound and healthy part of the 

 tree. 



Another error, according to the same writer, 

 consists " in the habit of encouraging luxuriant 

 upright branches to the great injury of the nat- 

 ural horizontal fruit-bearing branches ; these 

 are very properly called glutton branches, be- 

 cause they consume the sap, which would oth- 

 erwise go into the lateral and fruit-bearing 

 branches, and in the course of a few years they 

 leave the fruit branches decaying and decayed ; 

 the farmer then resorts to his axe, cuts away 

 the dead and dying wood, and leaves the glutton 

 in full possession of all the nourishment which 

 the roots afl"ord ; but in return this voracious 

 member of the orchard gives no fruit until ma- 

 ny years, and then of an inferior quality. " To 

 prevent this the cultivator should suppress all 

 the stiff", upright shoots the first year they ap- 

 pear, by cutting them off" close to the branch 

 from which they issue, taking care not to leave 

 the shoulder to the shoot, as he will in such 

 case have the same duty to perform again ; but 

 if the shoulder of the glutton be cut away, the 

 sap will be distributed among the lateral fruit 

 bearing branches, which will be kept in vigor, 

 and continue in a healthful fruit-bearing state." 



Mr. Forsyth, and other writers, give numer- 

 ous and minute directions relative to restoring 

 old and decayed trees ; and where the kind is 

 very valuable, and its fruit uncommonly fine, it 

 may be expedient to be at some pains and ex- 

 pense to prolong the life of a tree which is 

 withering and rotting with age. But we think 

 there is good sense in the following observa- 

 tions by Mr. M'Mahon, who says, " I am not 

 an advocate for much doctoring old, decayed 

 or sickly trees, but the reverse ; therefore re- 

 commend as the preferable way to replace such 

 with young healthy trees, so soon as they shew 

 strong symptoms of decay. Whenever you 

 meet with a tree the fruit of which you esteem, 

 propagate it immediately, whilst in health, by 

 budding or grafting, kc. and if it should after- 

 wards get into a declined state, replace it with 



* Or, to prevent this, the bark and a part of the wood 

 may be Jint cut on the under rule. 



