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THE ILLIIsrOIS FA.RMEI?. 



147 



complacent savage had taken the pleasant 

 fancy into his head, and there was no argu- 

 ing, or begging, or lying out of it. 



Finally, I compromised by consenting to a 

 trot; I loosened the reins of my horse, when 

 he shot forward as if hurled from the mouth 

 of a cannon. On we sped with the speed of 

 lightning over the plains — through ravines 

 — up the sides of mounds — down into gullies 

 — tearing the parched earth beneath us and 

 raising two dense masses of dust. On we 

 went as if all the fiends of Tophet were after 

 us^-our horses neck and neck — and one 

 rider cleaving desperately with both hands 

 to the mane of the charger. . My feet slipped 

 out of the stirrups; my turban came down 

 over my eyes, blinding and bcmuddling me 

 altogether. I desperately pulled away at 

 the bits; I shouted to my ]iedouin to hold up; 

 I pleaded; I entreated; I magnanimously of- 

 fered to waive the honors of the race — but in 

 vain. He brandished his spear, shouted in 

 wild glee, and dashed forward anew-; my 

 horse followed as if every hair on his head 

 were winged; and so we kept madly on racing 

 until we halted perforce by the shore of the 

 Dead Sea. I was glad enough to dismount, 

 and in the wildly-weird scene before me soon 

 forgot the race and its perils. 



Cultivate Qnd Improve. 



Deterioration in plants and animals, is as 

 possible as improvement. Nations, once re- 

 nowned as the perfection of the human race, 

 by neglect, have sunk back into barbarism. 

 Egypt was once so learned, that it is recorded, 

 as a striking mark ofhis greatness, that Moses 

 "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp- 

 tians." Egypt is now a semi-barbarous pro- 

 vince of Turkey, so poor that none do her 

 reverence. The Bedouin robber makes his 

 haunts where was once the Alexandrian 

 School, from which has come much of our 

 civilization and science. Tyre, celebrated in 

 Holy Writ for her knowledge in the arts, 

 and navigation, has lost her designation as 

 "Queen of the Sea," and scarcely a vestige 

 of her greatness, her arts, or her power re- 

 mains. 



We might extend our illustrations of the 

 truth of our position, at the expense of our 

 pride of human progress, but the.«; will be 

 sufficient. 



The best breed of animals extant, turned 

 into the wilderness, will soon lose their dis- 

 tinctive qualities, and assimilate to the origi- 

 nal wild stock. But a few generations are 

 required to change the Berkshire, or China, 

 into the long-nosed, flap-eared wild hoir, from 

 which all our varieties have sprung. 



So with our fruit. Let the best variety of 

 apple known, grow np in a hcdirc, or in the 

 woods, and in a short time the descendants 

 will be no better than bitter crabs. 



We may follow this l-.nY uf dcteriorati^^n 

 through the whole vegetable and animal crea- 

 tion, and wc shall find it unerring — ichaf is 

 not prQjnssi'ny,' is rttroiradiiKj. ' Every lar- 

 mer, then, may make up his m'ind that unles.-? 

 by his efforts, projjerly directed, in taxing 

 nature, ho is improving his stock, and other 

 products, they wil! deteriorate in his keeping. 

 If we eat our best and earliest grain, jjenera- 

 tioji after generation, or sell it because the 

 immediate profit is greater, the rieh wheat 

 kernel will soon become a shriveled con- 



cern, as unlike its ancestor as a crab is to a 

 pippin. 



By cultivation, all our choice varieties of 

 apple have been produced from the wild ci^ab 

 of Asm — by neglect, they will return to that 

 again. Our best varieties of peach have been, 

 by cultivation, produced from a fruit of Per- 

 sia, that possessed, in its whole mass, the \\o\- 

 sonous property that is now in the seed; and 

 a person eating some of the nch, pulpy vari- 

 eties of ]gears, can hardly imagine that it is a 

 descendant of what Pliny described eighteen 

 hundred years ago, when he said, "all pears 

 whatsoever, are but a heaA'y meat, unless they 

 be well boiled or baked." 



While suchha.s been the progress forward, 

 of many of the fruits, others have greatly de- 

 teriorated, or progressed-- backward. Xot 

 long since, some wheat kernels were found in 

 the coffin of one of the Gallic kintrs, whohad 

 been buried fourteen hundred years. The 

 wheat, in its botanical character, is identical 

 with the wheat of the present day; and 3'et, 

 on being planted, it produced from sixteen 

 to twenty stalks to each grain, and had an 

 average of 'twenty more grains to a stalk, 

 and each grain heavier than our common 

 wheat. . , 



This shows that wheat cttlturehas dwarfed 

 the crop in the last fourteen centuries, so as 

 to almost make the plant a different species: 

 and every year's cropping is making it less, 

 and less likely that we shall keep even the 

 present deteriorated article good without 

 constant care and skill in the use of fertili- 

 zers, and in the selection of seed. 



The descendants of vegetables, as well as 

 of animals, are the representatives of their 

 ancestors. If consumption, scrofula, or other 

 disease exist in the parent, it will appear in 

 the children; and though it may sometimes 

 pass over a single generation, it is sure to 

 appear in the next. It is so with vegetables : 

 sow peas, full of bugs, and you will getbiigcA' 

 peas; sow wheat, full of weevil and smut, and 

 you will reap a rich crop of weevil and smut; 

 sow shriveled and late ripened wheat, and it 

 will require a miracle to produce a good 

 crop. In the retrograding scale, the descen- 

 dants are always worse than the parents. In 

 the human race, avarice in the parent makes 

 a thief of the child — the principle is inheri- 

 ted, but is more fully developed. So in all 

 animals and vegetables. The bad trait^s in 

 the parents, arc inherited by the offspring, 

 and more fully developed. Deterioration 

 thus goes on, in accelerated ratio, until we 

 can scarcely trace a resemblance to the an- 

 cestor. 



Let every farmer, then, conscientiouslv 

 resolve never to allowagood article to deterio- 

 rate on his hands; but, by taxing the forces 

 of Nature, to improve whatever is intnistcd 

 to his care. Let him resolve, not only to 

 compel the earth to yield her increase in 

 abundance, but that the abundance sijall be 

 improved in quality. — Ohio Fanner. 

 •*• 



Oil tlic Scnsilive Faculty of the Ilorse's Foot. 



The sensitive faculty of the foot is found 

 in its nervous and membranous tissues; for it 

 is well known that the hoof, sole, bars, and 

 horny frog, are insensible — the medium 

 through which the sense of touch is develop- 

 ed or aroused. 



By this wisely-planned arrangement^ a 



liorse can Vjitli considerable degree of accura- 

 cy, ascertain the nature of the ground over 

 Wijich he 15 travelling, and thus regulate the 

 action and force of his limbs, so as to favor 

 his feet, nnd lessen the concu.^sion, which, if 

 he were destitute of this sense of feeling, 

 must occur throughout the whole animal 

 fabric. 



As a familiar illustration of this peculiar 

 sense of touch, suppose a person places in 

 contact with his teeth, apiece of ice, or applies 

 warm water t>) same, immediately he experi- 

 ences a .sensation of heat or chiUlness, as the 

 case may be. This occurs, simply bv contact 

 or touch; the teeth, like the hoof and its hor- 

 ny appo:' da ges, being devoid of sensibility; 

 yet both have nervous filaments on their in- 

 terior fiurface-s. Witliin the tooth we find 

 the dental iievve, and within the houf is also 

 found a siiiiilar arrangement, only on a more 

 extensive and magnificent plan. The teeth 

 aiid'hoofs, tb.ercforc, viay be said to be analo- 

 gous in function, so far as the transmission of 

 .sensibility is concL-rned, and at the same time 

 they offer a v,'all of defence and protection to 

 nerves, which are too delicate to eomc in con- 

 tact with crude matter. Thorefove the horse's 

 hoof is to the foot iust what the tooth is to 

 the dental nervo. 



i:?ome horses, however, appear, while trav- 

 eling over tbfe road, to be governed by the 

 .'ense of hearing, as well as that of sensa- 

 tion. 



Mr, Pcrcival has remarked, that '^lind 

 horse's are observed to lift their fore legs in 

 a manner that would iudiwte they are sound- 

 ing the ground, after the fashion of a blind 

 man with a stick: therefore they may be said 

 to sec with their feet. — Vetcrinari/ Journal. 



-*f~ 



Edufaticn of Young Farmers. 



I have lately seen, in different newspapers, 

 .several advercisements for young marrfed 

 lacu to care of lkrm,s^ poor houses, &c., and 

 I find on inquiry, that men qualified for those 

 .stations are very scpa'ce. while all the learned 

 proicssions arc tilled to overflowing. The for- 

 mer comma'id as high salaries or higher than 

 the latter obtain on an average, ' ' ; 



Novr, is it not somcwh at sing-ular^ that wMle 

 the professional man has to give years of time,. 

 talent.?, and hundreds of dollars to bbt;jin bis 

 learning, that vre .'?.o not h:ive a supply of well 

 (jualifiod vounLcfiirmcr.^, when thcvcan obtain 

 their learning, and have wages all the time 

 into the bargains? This to me appears to be 

 a wrong state of affairs — a screw loose some- 



Vvh<TO. 



I think thi;' i< a .subject which calls for, and 

 would bear a tlio.'-ough discussion, at all our 

 agricultural meetings, al.-^o in tlie uaws- 

 papcrs until it awakc'u.s some of our farmers 

 to n seii&c of their duty, at least to their own 

 boys in regard to a farm education. There 

 may be, and probably are, different reasons 

 for thi.s state of affairt-; but I believe that the 

 iarmcrs themselves v^ill have to take the bur- 

 den of the blame upon themselves. 



For instance iu haviug a large nitmbGr of 

 men in my employ, aad from diifcrent States, 

 I hive never vet tound Q;icm:m fresh frcm 

 home, thatka.w how. or ever hadsown grain 

 of any kind, or knew how much seed of any 

 kind per acre should' be sown, or one whose 

 father had givou the least iu.struction in this 



