408 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept, 



turist can be found, than he who will furnish da- 

 ta by which the cost of raising crops can b^ as- 

 certained, and I would suggest to Mr. Hitchcock, 

 that his figures, to be of any value in this respect, 

 must be expressed, not in dollars and cents, but 

 in days' work, weights and quantities. I have no 

 means of going and doing likewise from reading 

 the fact that he applied manure costing fifty-three 

 dollars to his acre of corn. I want to know the 

 number of cords and the kind of manure em- 

 ployed. I should likewise feel grateful for any 

 information as to the expense in labor, not in 

 dollars, of harvesting six acres of corn, now rep- 

 resented by two items, cutting stalks and pick- 

 ing corn, charged at twenty-four dollars ; if noth- 

 ing more, I should be glad to see this sum appor- 

 tioned among the items — bundling 1088 stalks, 

 664 bundles of corn fodder, husking 256 bushels 

 of corn, taking up and cleaning 10 bushels of 

 roots, getting in 4 loads of pumpkins, harvesting 

 and shelling half a bushel of beans, all of which 

 came from the corn-field. When we can approx- 

 imate more closely than we now do to the labor 

 required for all these operations, we shall be on 

 the right road to agricultural success. F. 



For the New JSngland Farmer. 

 BETBOSPECTIVE NOTES. 



Caution in Purchasing Seeds or Imple- 

 ments Necessary. — The readers of the A^. E. 

 Farmer could hardly fail to notice the very excel- 

 lent article with the above caption in the weekly 

 of May 1 1th, and in the monthly of June. It cer- 

 tainly seems scarcely possible that men of ordi- 

 nary discernment, and of honest and good hearts, 

 could fail to recognize in said article, abundant 

 evidences of a superior grade or amount of the 

 same intellectual and moral qualities ; for what 

 hut an honest and good heart, or a large amount 

 of benevolence and public spirit, could have 

 prompted the writer to take the trouble of pen- 

 ning that article, while perfectly aware, as he un- 

 doubtedly was, that it would expose him to the 

 ill will, maledictions, and perhaps, revengeful 

 feelings of the knaves and impostors against 

 whose tricks and traps it was his wish to caution 

 and protect his unsuspecting brethren ? Then, 

 too, what but a superior degree of intelligence 

 and penetration could have enabled the writer 

 to succeed so well in the accomplishment of 

 his very benevolent and public-spirited purpose ? 

 For these qualities, so manifest in this article, 

 Mr. Bassett must surely have secured, not only 

 the admiration, but also the grateful appreciation 

 of hundreds of the readers of his communication. 

 Such, at least, were the sentiments called forth 

 towards Mr. Bassett in the breast of one who 

 knows nothing of Mr. B. save through the col- 

 umns of the Farmer, and who, from the many 

 hundreds of miles between them, is never likely 

 to know him — who, in a word, can be influenced 

 by no personal or local partiality, but only by 

 considerations in which all the readers of the 

 Farm.er may equally participate. 



But our purpose in taking pen in hand on this 

 occasion, was, not so much to give some expres- 

 sion to the sentiments of admiration, gratitude, 

 and high appreciation to which Mr. B. has so 

 fully established an unquestionable right and ti- 



tle from his agricultural brethren — not so much 

 to give an expression to such sentiments, as to 

 make an effort to impress more deeply upon the 

 minds of farmers the necessity for an ever-in- 

 creasing watchfulness against the impositions and 

 frauds of the advertisers and venders of new 

 things in their line, inasmuch as the number and 

 the cuteness of these impostors seem to be con- 

 tinually on the increase. 



The necessity of wide-awake watchfulness on 

 the part of farmers, and the value, moral, as well 

 as pecuniary, of such cautions and suggestions as 

 those contained in Mr. Bassett's article, will 

 appear quite manifest, we think, to those who 

 will give due attention to such considerations as 

 the following : 



1. The number of attempts at frauds upon far- 

 mers, has, of late years, been continually on the 

 increase. Those who have specially noticed the 

 advertisements in agricultural and other papers 

 supposed to be largely circulated among this class, 

 must be well aware of this fact, namely, that at- 

 tempted frauds on farmers are continually on the 

 increase ; and those who have not given any 

 special attention to such attempts would require, 

 for their being fully convinced of the fact, only to 

 see a moderate collection of deceptive advertise- 

 ments, and to hear of the sales of worthless arti- 

 cles by peddlers and others, nowhere so exten- 

 sively, perhaps, as at Fairs and Exhibitions, where 

 the hurry and excitement of the scene tend to 

 prevent due carefulness and caution. 



2. These attempts at frauds upon farmers are 

 increasing, not only in number, but also in inge- 

 nuity, cuteness, and cunning craftiness lying in 

 wait to deceive. This is a reason of much force for 

 wide-awake watchfulness, and for gratitude to 

 those who expose such trickery, or caution us 

 against it. 



3. Farmers cannot rely for protection against 

 the impositions and frauds attempted to be prac- 

 ticed upon them, either upon the publishers or 

 the editors of agricultural papers, and far less 

 upon those in the same relations to the common 

 newspaper press. Of the reasons why such pro- 

 tection need not be looked for from either of the 

 sources just named, we will speak immediately ; 

 but taking our proposition as a fact, and waiving 

 all question as to the fact being right or wrong, 

 it is evident that when farmers cannot rely for 

 protection upon those to whom they most natu- 

 rally look for it, they must the more entirely de- 

 pend upon their own penetration and good judg- 

 ment, with the aid of such hints, rules, or sug- 

 gestions as may be furnished to them by those of 

 their fraternity whose eagle-eyed discernment and 

 whose public spirit or benevolence are more or 

 less like those so notably evinced by Mr. Bas- 

 sett. 



Some of our farming fraternity having large 

 conscientiousness, or a more lofty tone and stand- 

 ard of morality than is usual, or having suffered 

 loss and vexation from having become the dupes 

 of some cunning sharper whose advertisements 

 had been admitted into a paper enjoying their 

 implicit, unsuspecting confidence, have insisted 

 upon it as due at once to morality and to the pa- 

 trons of their papers, that publishers of newspa- 

 pers, and still more of agricultural papers, should 

 rigidly exclude from their columns all advertise- 

 ments in regard to which they had not good as- 



