DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND ITS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XIV. 



BOSTON, DECEMBER, '1862. 



NO. 12. 



NOURSE, EATON & TOLMAN, Proprietors. 

 Office.... 100 Washington Street. 



SIMON BROWN, Editor. 



HENRY F. FRENCH, Associate Editor. 



SUGGESTED BY DECEMBER. 



"Now, all amid the rigors of the year, 

 In the wild depth of winter, while without 

 The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat 

 Between the gi-owing forest and the shore, 

 Beat by the boundless multitude of waves ; 

 A rural, sheltered, solitary scene. 

 Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join 

 To cheer the gloom. There, studious, let me.sit, 

 Sages of ancient time, as gods revered. 

 As gods beneficent, who blessed mankind 

 With arts and arms, and humanized a world." 



Thomson's Seasons. 



HE last breath 

 of the Old 

 Year has de- 

 parted, and 

 the new one, 

 with its icy 

 brow and chil- 

 , ling storms, 

 commenced. - 

 We can do 

 but little out 

 of doors with 

 advantage at 

 this season, 

 but we can 

 accomplish much within. While, in a great meas- 

 ure, the winter, with icy hands, excludes us from 

 communion with our fellow men, it, at the same 

 time, opens to us the treasury of literature and 

 science, and the advantages of retrospection and 

 self-communion. Well may the farmer, imbued 

 with a thankful and hopeful spirit, exclaim, with 

 the poet : 



The work is done, the end is near, 



Beat heart to flute and tabor. 

 For beauty, wedded to the year. 



Completes herself from labor ; 



» ♦ * * 



There is a hush of joy and love. 



Now giving hands have crowned us— 

 There is a heaven up above — 



There is a heaven around us." 



The earth is frozen ; the implements of husband- 

 ry have gone into winter quarters ; the herds and 

 flocks — the trees, the shrubs, the grasses — are all 

 hybernating. We have reached another stage, 

 attained another segment in the round of life, and 

 enriched by the fruits of our previous toils, we can 

 contentedly and quietly rest from our labors. We 



can now 



"Gather round the evening fire 



And crack the jokes that never tire." 



The best period of rest in the circle of the wide 

 year is now at hand. The business of cultivating 

 the earth and securing the crops, — the appropri- 

 ate employment of the husbandman — is complet- 

 ed. He has passed through the busy and labori- 

 ous cares of seed-time and tillage, the "joys of the 

 early and later harvests," and has, in the spirit of 

 true thankfulness and the cheering songs of 

 "Harvest Home," welcomed the last of his crops 

 to his cellars and his barns. The last of the 

 flowers have faded — the frosts have turned field 

 and forest to a russet brown, and the leaves that 

 during the kaleidoscopic changes of maturer au- 

 tumn, put on such gorgeous coloring, are now 

 changed to a sad and sombre hue, and scattered 

 over the icy ground. The roseate hues of summer 

 no longer brighten the skies, which look chill and 

 wintry, and even the few clear days that are oc- 

 casionally interspersed through the solar chain of 

 diurnal changes, are succeeded by cloud and storm. 

 Nature bids us pause and look back over the van- 

 ished year. The paling stars, the purpling dawn 

 and the rising sun usher in his morning, and the 

 splendid coloring of the evening heavens, with 

 their ever new and changing features of illuminat- 

 ed clouds, are his for a perpetual possession. He 

 is daily in the school of Nature — of the Great Ar- 

 chitect whose silent teaching, more eff'ectually 

 than those of the Garden, the Porch or the Aca- 

 demy — of sage or sophist, open up to his vision 

 the pathways of knowledge, and of the mysteri- 

 ous Inve wbr^'jp posenro i«! rli"ir\pcit, lorp. 



