1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FARRIER. 



269 



spreading the manure, and the labor upon 

 nine acres, instead of" twenty-five. 



Wood for fuel, timber for building, materi- 

 als for furniture and for the use of all workers 

 in wood, are becoming every year scarcer and 

 dearer, and ti-ees upon the hill side or the 

 road side, on the plain or in the valley, will be 

 "aye growing," while the planter is sleeping, 

 and will continue to grow when the planter 

 shall be lying with his forefathers under their 

 shade. 



Then we must not forget the birds. We 

 cannot get on without them, and it seems a 

 great mistake to make no provision for them, 

 when their co-operation is so essential to us. 

 A few of the insects ai'e our friends, and may 

 make honey or spin silk for our enjoyment. 

 Most of them are enemies, ready, and, in the 

 absence of the birds, able to take possession 

 of or to forestall the fruits of our orchards, the 

 vegetables of our gardens, the crops of our 

 fields, even the trees of our forests. We must 

 com't the alliancb and friendship of the birds. 

 We must have, near our fields and gardens, 

 copses and thickets to invite and shelter them. 

 We must protect them against cats and boys 

 and idle sportsmen. The birds are always 

 ready to be our neighbors. Tiiey work by us 

 and for us, and do not like, and ought not to 

 be obliged, to go far for their homes. They 

 are pleasant and social neighbors. It is pleas- 

 ant to see their delicate shapes and graceful 

 motions, and to hear their songs. Their 

 ceaseless activity is a perpetual lesson to us. 

 It is pleasant to have meadows, wheat, peas, 

 and turnips that have escaped the fly, and to 

 gather apples and pears with no other marks 

 upon them than the remnant of the blossom. 

 These pleasures and advantages are only to 

 be secured by the constant co-operation, 

 throughout the year, of the birds. We shall 

 Boon see the necessity of increasing their num- 

 bers by importing them from Europe. 



Whoever has had the good fortune to spend 

 a summer in Old England, must have brought 

 away in his memory, many charming pic- 

 tures of rural scenery unsurpassed elsewhere. 

 One beautiful element in this scenery is the 

 hawthorn hedges, flowering in spring, the 

 resort and home of the birds, varying with 

 the seasons, sometimes a little ragged, al- 

 ways picturesque. In the agricultural coun- 

 ties you have to look in the hedges for the 

 ■wild shi'ubs and trees, and along their bor- 

 ders for most of the wild flowers. No- 

 where is there anything to surpass these 

 hedges. In New England, we have nothing 

 yet to take their place. They protect, soften 

 and ornament the field they defend. The 

 nearest approach to their beauty and use in 

 this country, is given by the borders to the 

 roads and lanes which I am endeavoring to 

 save. 



A traveller entering one of our New 

 England villages, and, as he looks down upon 

 it, observing the church and the school house 



surrounded by shady groves, lines of stately 

 forest trees along all the great roads, so that 

 the children going home at noon, may walk 

 every where in the shade — the by-roads and 

 lanes bordered with shrubbery and trees, like 

 the hedges and hedge-rows of Old England, 

 and the hills, round about, crowned with for- 

 ests, would involuntarily say : How plcasajit ! 

 how beautiful ! and would be likely to think — 

 How fortunate and happy the children, how 

 thoughtful and prudent their fathers ! 



If we wish to dwell in a more genial climate, 

 softer in winter, and shadier, cooler and moister 

 in summer, in towns or villages more beauti- 

 ful to the eye of taste, and more attractive and 

 agreeable to the hand of industry, we must 

 take care of the forests, and of these edges, 

 relics of and substitutes for the forests, where- 

 ever they are to be found. 



If you can find space for me, I should like, 

 in another paper, to say a few words about the 

 trees and other plants which we ought to take 

 measures to retaui or to reinstate. 



Boston, April, 1867. g. b. e. 



For the New England Farmer. 



WHAT CAJSr BE DONE TO SAVE THE 

 APPLE. 



There are those who, believing in periodic 

 states of health and sickness in the vegetable 

 kingdom, hold that the apple is subject to a 

 partial failure for a series of years, and then, 

 from unseen causes, to a return to its former 

 productiveness. But science throws too much 

 light upon our ways for us to grope along thus 

 blindly. Man has the same control over the 

 culture of trees that he has over the culture of 

 corn, wheat, or any other annual. All are 

 subject to the same laws and affected by like 

 causes. There is this difference, however. 

 With animals, effect follows cause immediately 

 and is readily seen ; while those that affect 

 the health of trees may be at work years be- 

 fore any thing is noticed by the unpracticed 



As trees are the growth of years, it requires 

 more foresight and thought to cultivate them 

 than it does the short-lived plants and vegeta- 

 bles. Now that the peach has fiiiled, it is 

 easy to find sufficient reasons for its failure ; 

 ancl may not the same general causes which 

 wrought its destruction be now at work upon 

 its more hardy companion, the apple, render- 

 ing it unprofitable and threatening for it a 

 similar fate ? I believe all the evils that have 

 befallen the apple have come through the agen- 

 cy of man. Through the same agency nmst 

 come the remedy. If ever an "ounce of pre- 

 ventive is worth a pound of cure," it is now in 

 the incipient stages of a failure, before diseases 

 develop into epidemics. So wide-spread al- 

 ready are the causes of the evils, that isolated 

 individual effort can effect only partial cures. 

 Radical and complete cure depends upon the 

 combined action of the many. StiU what the 



