CROPS Ab PROFITS. 123 



no inveterate improver should ever tempt me tc 

 extirpate the dandelions from the green carpet ol 

 my lawn, or to cut away the wild Kalmia bush 

 which in yonder group among the rocks, is just now 

 reddening into its crown of blossoms. 



The Farm Flat. 



IT is a different matter with the eighty acres of 

 meadow which lie stretched out in view from 

 my door. There, at least, it seemed to me, must be 

 a clean, clear sweep for the furrows. Yet I remem- 

 ber there were long wavy lines of elder-bushes, and 

 wild-cherries, groping beside the disorderly divid- 

 ing fences. There were weakly old apple-trees, with 

 blackened, dead tops, and with trunks half concealed 

 by thickets of dwarfish shoots ; there were triplets 

 of lithe elms, and hickory trees, scattered here 

 and there; in some fields, stunted, draggled cedar 

 bushes, and masses of yellow- weed ; a little patch of 

 ploughed-land in the corner of one enclosure, and a 

 waving half acre of rye in the middle of the next. 

 The fences themselves were disjointed and twisted, 

 the fields without uniformity in size, and with no 

 order in their arrangement. 



" I think we must mend the look of these mead- 

 ows, Coombs ? " 



