

^t "^^^■- 



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THE ILLIISrOIS Fi^RMER. 



93 



tect them by high inclosures, will not only 

 cause them to be diseased, but make a para- 

 dise for noxious vermin. I have not failed to 

 secure a good crop of grapes for txoenty 

 years." 



Ihc |tofet 



Children in the Flower Garden. 

 If parents take an interest in the gar- 

 den, the children imbibe their taste. 

 This cultivation tends to useful results, 

 both moral and physical. Children 

 must have some hobby — a kite, a whistle, 

 a pup, or something else to amuse them. 

 Their minds are active, and they must 

 have employment. Give children a 

 patch in the garden ; teach them how to 

 prepare the ground ; how to plant it; 

 admire with them the plants as they 

 come up, and as they grow, and as they 

 yield floAvers or fruit. Children, and 

 others of larger growth, have more love 

 for plants that their own hands have 

 tended, than for all others. Don't you 

 think it does their little hearts good, 

 when, with sparkling eyes and flushed 

 cheeks, they pick a flower of their own 

 growing ? It does so. And this may 

 be the beginning of the exercise of a 

 taste that will follow them through all 

 after life. A little out-door exercise is 

 good for them physically, and it enlarg- 

 es and brightens their perceptions of the 

 beautiful. I never yet knew a woman 

 fond of flowers, delighting in their cul- 

 tivation, that was not a good house- 

 keeper. Why, it is an evidence of both 

 innocence and refinement, that homage 

 is voluntarily paid to by man. Pass a 

 cottage, where you see plants arranged, 

 even if in broken tea-pots and uncouth 

 boxes, and you will at once believe that 

 there is moral worth and purity in that 

 dwelling. 



Tlie Circus— The Flower Garden. 



Not long since, in the drizzly rain, 

 among the numerous teams and wagons 

 that thronged our city, was one in which 

 there were some four temales, and hi'lf 

 as many men. They had come to town 

 to see the performances at the circus ; 

 to see women and men ride horses, and 

 men stand on their heads, and hear the 

 coarse, stale jokes of the clown. The 

 females alluded to, came into a seed 

 store, and amused themselves by look- 

 ing over the list of seeds, and reading 

 descriptions of vegetables and flowers. 



One of them was a bright, black-eyed 

 girl, about the interesting age of thir- 

 teen. An idea seemed to strike her. 

 '- Sister," said she, "I am not going to 

 the circus. I don't know what I want 

 to go there for. I have seen women ride 

 horses once, and jump through paper 

 hoops, and men ride six horses, and all 

 that — and they don't look half so well 

 in doing it, as the pictures look in the 

 newspapers, or stuck up on the walls. 

 I tell you what lam going to do. I am 

 going to save my half dollar, and lay it 

 out in seeds ; and a good many of them 

 shall be flower seeds, and I'll get 

 Jim to dig me a piece in the garden, 

 and I will lay it out and plant the seeds, 

 and tend it myself. You know what a^ 

 pretty garden Betty England had last 

 year, and how you praised it, and how 

 you said you meant to have one, and 

 how everybody said she had the prettiest 

 flowers they ever saw : Yes, I won't gO 

 to the Circus, but I'll buy me some flow- 

 er seeds, and Betty shan't beat me in 

 a flower garden this year." These 

 were not exactly the words said, but 

 they embrace a good deal that was said. 

 And so Miss didn't go to the cir- 

 cus, but she laid out her half dollar in 

 flower seeds, and as I looked over her 

 selections, I saw she had the scarlet cy- 

 press, the candytuft, the rocket lark- 

 spur, the carnation, the China i3ink, the 



sweet Williams , the pcrtulacca , the 

 escholtzia, the bartonia and German 

 Aters, and some others. She looked 

 like a queen as she gathered up her 

 seeds. That girl will make a lovely and 

 useful woman. Boys ! we shan't let 

 you know who she was. But when you 

 cross the Sangamon and go to Athens, 

 and diverge a little to the left of the 

 road, you may hereafter see a beautiful 

 flower garden. 



<•* 



griculture Deelining in the United States? 



iVe observe in the proceedings of 

 Congress that a bill has been submitted 

 by Mr. Morrill, of Vermont, proposing 

 to grant to the several States 5,920,090 

 acres of land, to be divided among them 

 in proportion to the number of Senators 

 and Representatives they send to Con- 

 gress. The object of the bill is to en 

 courage agriculture, which he claims is 

 declining mall the States of the Union. 

 He says that it will "do something to 

 induce farmers' sons and daughters to 

 cluster round the old homestead ; some- 

 thing to remove the last vestige of 

 pauperism from our land ; sometliing 

 for peace, good morals, churches and 



common schools ; something to enable 

 sterile railroads to pay dividends : some- 

 thing to enable the people to bear the 

 enormous expenditure of the national 

 government ; something to check the 

 passion of individuals and of the nation, 

 for indefinite territorial expansion, and 

 to preserve them from ultimate decrep- 

 itude." 



In relation to tJie decline of agricul- 

 ture in the United States, Mr. Morrill 

 says : 



** The quantity of food produced bears 

 each year a smaller proportion to the 

 number of acres under cultivation, and 

 that over a very wide area some of the 

 most useful crops bid fair to become ex- 

 tinct. In the New England States 

 alone, the wheat crop, instead of in- 

 creasing with the population, fell from 

 1840 till 1850 from 2,014,111 bushels 

 to 1,090,132 ; and the potato crop du- 

 ring the same period from 35,180,500 

 bushels to 10,418,181. The Southern 

 States are hardly any better off. In 

 the four States of Tennessee, Kentucky, 

 Georgia and Alabama, there was a fall- 

 ing off in the wheat produced during the 

 same period of 60 per cent, or more 

 than half. The State of New York is 

 probably one of the best, in an agricul- 

 tural point of view, in the Union. The 

 farms are larger, and more capital is in- 

 vested in them, and more skill applied 

 in cultivation than in any other. Yet 

 the number of sheep in the State now is 

 300,000 less than it wus thirty years 

 ago, and within the last five years has 

 declined at the rate of fifty per cent. 

 The product of wheat has fallen from 

 13,391,770 bushels in 1845, to 6,000- 

 000 in the past year." 



To be brief, Mr. Morrill assximes that 

 in every State in the Union agricultu- 

 ral statistics tell the same story. With 

 the largest area of arable laud of every 

 nation in the world ; with the smallest 

 population in proportion to the square 

 mile ; with the lowest rate of taxation ; 

 with skill, enterprise, ingenuity, and 

 freedom from all feudal trammels, we 

 appear to be fast returning to the wil- 

 derness state, and upon the condition of 

 absolute dependence upon the taxed and 

 overcrowded Europe, for the bread we 

 eat, the beef we roast, and the horses 

 we ride. 



Mr. Morrill's scheme of relief is the 

 construction of thirty-two agricultural 

 colleges, which are to inaugurate a new 

 era in agriculture, revive it from its 

 present retrograde condition, and estab- 

 lish it upon a solid and endaiing basis. 



The increase of cities in the Uni- 

 ted States , in proportion to the in- 

 crease of the surrounding country, is 

 greater than in any other country in 

 the world, and appears to accelerate as 

 the nation advances in wealth and intel- 

 ligence. We have no doubt any thing 



