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DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND _TS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XII. 



BOSTON, JULY, 1860. 



NO. 7. 



NOURSE, EATOX & TOLMAX, Proprietoks. cTMOW BROWN EmTOR 

 O1FICE....34 Merchants' Bow. SIMOW BKOWN, EDITOR. 



FRED'K HOLBROOK, ) Associate 

 HENRY F FRENCH, | Editors. 



CALENDAR FOR JULY. 



The fields are all alive with sultry noise 

 Of labor's sounds and insects' busy joys ; 

 The reapers o'er their glittering sickles stoop ; 



****** 

 Some o'er the rustling scythes go bonding on ; 

 And shockers follow where their toils have gone, 

 Heaping the swaths that rustle in the sun. 



Clare's SheplierdU Calendar 



ULY has come, and 

 the whole -world of 

 wealth 13 spread 

 out before us in 

 ' prodigal array. — 

 What a sense of 

 fulness everything 

 about us has. The 

 old house on the 

 hillside, that has 

 stood out as blank 

 and bald as a flag- 

 staff for six months 

 past, is now hid- 

 den from view, or 

 its gable can only 

 ' be seen through a 

 profusion of trem- 

 bling foliage. — 

 "The woods and 

 groves have dark- 

 ened and thickened into one impervious mass 

 of sober uniform green, and having for a Avhile 

 ceased to exercise the more active functions of 

 the spring, are resting from their labors. * * * 

 In winter, the trees may be supposed to sleep 

 in a state of insensible inactivity, and in spring 

 to be laboring with the flood of new life that is 

 pressing through their veins, and forcing them 

 to perform the offices attached to their existence. 

 But in summer, having reached the middle term 

 of their annual life, they pause in their appoint- 

 ed course, and then, if ever, taste the nourish- 

 ment they take in, and 'enjoy the air they 



breathe.' And he, who, sitting in summer time 

 beneath the shade of a spreading tree, can see 

 its bare branches fan the soft breeze as it passes, 

 and hear its polished leaves whisper and twit- 

 ter to each other, like birds at love-making ; and 

 yet can feel anything like an assurance that it 

 does not enjoy its existence, know little of the 

 tenure by which he holds his own, and still less 

 of that by which he clings to the hope of a future. 

 I do not ask him to make it an article of his/aiVZt 

 that the flowers feel ; but I do ask him, for his 

 own sake, not to make it an article of his faith 

 that they do not" 



Nothing can be more grateful to the mind thaa 

 this flush of animated existence — these promises^ 

 of future crops ! How attractive and delightful 

 are the changing hues of the grain-fields. The ■ 

 rye is turning yellow, indicating that its time of 

 ripening is at hand. The wheat and barley are 

 of a dull green, while the oats are whitening, and 

 all are gracefully bending to the summer breeze 

 as it passes over them. "What can be more beau- 

 tiful to look on, from an eminence, than a great 

 plain, painted all over with the party-colored hon- 

 ors of the early portion of this month, when, the 

 all-pervading verdure of the spring has passed 

 away, and before the scorching heats of summer 

 have had time to prevail over the various tints 

 and hues that have taken place." 



How stately the trees stand on the lawn or 

 road-side, and how lovingly they have intermin- 

 gled their branches in the forest, and ever sing 

 in harmony that "the Hand that made them is 

 Divine." The influence of these trees on man 

 is neither small nor unimportant, for without 

 them our climate would probably undergo an en- 

 tire change. They furnish the soil with that un- 

 organized matter on which alone perfect plants 

 can live, by the decay of leaves, and ultimately 

 by the decay of trunks and branches. So the 

 waters of a country, the rivers and lakes, are ne- 

 cessarily affected by th-j state of the woods of that 



