DEVOTED TO AGRICTJLTUBE AND ITS KIWDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



YOL. XIL 



BOSTON, MAY, 1860. 



NO. 5. 



NOURSE, EATON & TOLMAN, Proprietohs. sIMON BROWN EDITOR 

 Office.... 04 Merchants' Row. SIMON BROWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 

 IIEXRY F. FRENCH, ] Editors. 



CALENDAR FOR MAY. 



"■When brighter scenes and milder skies 



Proclaim the opening 5"ear, 

 What various sounds of joy arise I 



What prospects bright appear !" 



ay! Why did 

 they name it 

 Mat ? Our En- 

 cyclopaedia says : 

 "As early as the 

 Salic Laws, this 

 month is called 

 Meo. and it 

 would appear 

 that the idea of 

 youthful beauty 

 and loveliness so 

 naturally con- 

 nected by north- 

 ern nations with 

 the month of 

 May, gave rise 

 to its name." 



The name must 

 have been given 

 a great while 

 ago, then ; for although we do not know the pre- 

 cise period when the Salic Laws were first in 

 vogue, we may infer from the fact of their exclud- 

 ing women from the right of inheritance, that it 

 was when the world was in a great state of bar- 

 barism. But although generations have passed 

 away, the world continues to say pretty things in 

 praise of May, and to call it by its sweet, sugges- 

 tive name. 



To the common observer, the world is always 

 young. The great ocean dashes its waves against 

 the shore just as it did at "Creation's dawn." 



"Time writes no wrinkles on its azure brow " 



There is a general air of freshness and newness 

 about the world in a spring day, which has a won- 



C^ 



derfully reviving effect. It is true, our planet has 

 kept a kind of journal, by which we know she is 

 not so very young, after all. It is written on the 

 grey-headed rocks, on the hoary-headed moun- 

 tains, and there are records in her bosom, which 

 those prying people, the geologists, know how to 

 decipher well enough, and they say that five 

 thousand years comprehends a mere fraction of 

 her existence. Yet the dandelions look out of the 

 grass just as gaily as if they were the fii-st dande- 

 lions ever created, and the birds sing as merrily as 



"The birds that sung 

 A hundred years ago." 



No wonder, then, that the love of nature is one 

 of the last loves that dies out of a man. All pleas- 

 ures of society, all business pursuits, at times 

 seem "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable," but so. 

 long as our senses remain to us, there is always 

 something soothing and restoring in a walk 

 through the lanes, and over the hills. We have 

 often thought that if one of those poor families 

 who live in a tenement with twelve other families 

 in the filthiest part of a great city, could be trans- 

 ported to a neat dwelling, Avith several acres of 

 land about it to cultivate, their morals and man- 

 ners would undergo a speedy change. Perhaps it 

 would do more for them, than a home missionary 

 could do. 



There is a great deal in being under one's own 

 vine and fig tree ; albeit another man's vine and 

 fig tree may be much more thrifty and flourishing 

 than ours, and there is something in the "old 

 homestead" that awakens associations which will 

 live when a thousand intervening events Have 

 passed from the memory. We would say nothing 

 of the common superstition thqt childhood is the 

 happiest period of life, but, at least, its impres- 

 sions are the strongest. You may forget your fii'st 

 impressions on seeing Niagara Falls, but you will 

 not forget the breathless interest with which you 

 watched some venturesome companion go across 



