78 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



to return from red to green, if immersed in 

 an alkaline atmosphere. 



He exposed under a glass receiver, in the 

 lif^ht, with a capsule containing ammonia, a 

 variety of autumnal red leaves, and had the 

 gratification to perceive that in most cases, the 

 green color was restored, the restored green 

 color remaining from some minutes to hours. 



Frost probably plays no other part in caus- 

 ing the autumnal tints, than merely to arrest 

 the circulation, by killing the leaves. When a 

 sharp frost occurs early in the fall, while the 

 pulp of the leaves is still full and plump, the 

 red colors come out brilUantly, because there 

 is plenty of the blue substance to be acted upon 

 by the juices then also abundant. When, on 

 the other hand, the leaves die slowly, and are 

 at the same time slowly dried in a late and 

 dry autumn, the pulp becomes so meagre and 

 the cuticle of the leaf so dry and hard, that 

 an abundant production of fine red tints is im- 

 possible, and brown, the color of decay, pre- 

 dominates. 



PLANTING TREES ALONG THE 

 HIGH"WAYS. 



Persons who have travelled through the in- 

 terior of New England, cannot have failed to 

 notice the great extent of road-side without 

 trees. Sometimes for miles together, along the 

 sides of extensive pastures and sprout-lands, the 

 roadside is barren, or covered with an un- 

 sightly and unprofitable growth of alders and 

 other wild shrubs, or, what is worse, bur- 

 docks, thistles or milk-weeds. 



This ought not to be. If these spaces-were 

 set with the sugar maple, and well cared for, 

 in the course of years they would well nigh 

 supply the whole population with all the sugar 

 it. would wish to consume, if added to what is 

 ah-eady produced in sugar orchards. When 

 the trees become past producing the sugar mak- 

 ino' fluid, they would form an immense amount 

 of valuable timber for mechanical purposes, 

 and the refuse portions make the most valu- 

 able fuel. 



But these are not all the good offices which 

 they would perform. Numerous tracts of 

 New England lands suffer for lack of mois- 

 ture, which would be greatly benefited by 

 trees as condensers of vapor, and thus en- 

 able such soils to produce remunerative crops. 

 The health which such trees would tend to 

 promote, and the charming beauty they would 



impart to the landscape, ought in themselves 



to be a sufficient motive to set us at work to 



plant them. 



In 1869, the Legislature of New York passed 



an act in relation to planting trees alongside 



of the public highways, and last winter, we 



tliink it was, they amended that act to read as 



follows, and it is now in force : — 



"Any inhabitant liable to highway tax who 

 shall transplant by the side of the public highway 

 any forest shade trees or fruit trees, of suitable 

 size, shall be allowed by the overseers of hi,£:;hways 

 in abatement of his highway tax, one dollar for 

 every four trees set out; but no row of elms shall 

 be placed nearer than seventy feet; no row of 

 maples or other forest trees nearer than fifty feet, 

 except locust, which may be set thirty feet apart ; 

 fruit trees must be set at least fifty feet apart, and 

 no allowance, as before mentioned, shall be made, 

 unless such trees shall have been set out the year 

 previous to the demand for said abatement of tax, 

 and living and well protected from annuals at the 

 tune of such demand." 



We hope that the Legislature of Massachu- 

 setts, at its next session, will adopt the fore- 

 going law, or one similar in effect, and that 

 all land owners where road sides are barren 

 of trees, will avail themselves of its privileges 

 at once. 



FARMERS' CLUBS AND TO^WN MEET- 

 INGS. 



History infonns us that when Charles II. granted 

 the province of Carolina, in 1663, to eight distin- 

 giushed noblemen of his realm, the celebrated 

 John Locke, at their request, drafted an elaborate 

 code for the government of the colony, in which 

 he endeavored to avoid all the errors and to com- 

 bine all the excellencies of existing and past sys- 

 tems of government. But however beautiful in 

 theory the scheme of the great philosopher might 

 have been on paper, it was found to be utterly im- 

 practicable and useless in the wilderness ; and all 

 attempts to put it into practical operation were soon 

 abandoned, and the people proceeded to adopt in 

 its stead such simple rules and regulations as were 

 necessary to govern their intercourse with each 

 other and with the wild men and wilder beasts by 

 whom they were surrounded. 



AVhile the plan of goveniment that was devised 

 by this gi-eat English philosopher to serve as a 

 model for the new world, and to shape the legisla- 

 tion of a continent, is remembered only as a fail- 

 ure, the deliberations of little collections of unlet- 

 tered pioneers became the model of State and na- 

 tional governments. 



May w^. not hope that what the town meeting 

 has done for the government of the country, the 

 farmers' club may yet accomplish for the advance- 

 ment of agriculture ? Liko John Locke's consti- 

 tution, the present organization of Agricultural 

 Boards and Societies fails to secure the ^♦^.arty sym- 

 pathy and co-operation of those for whom it was 



