VOL. VI. 



SPRINGFIELD, APRIL 186L 



XO. 4. 



April. 



We like to write of April^ for tten we 

 greet the first budding of Spring, and are 

 pleased with its first flowers. If we were in 

 Egypt, 3Iarch would be the favorite, for 

 while we arc writing this, the peach is cov- 

 ered yrith a gorgeous livery of bloom, and 

 the hill bides are teeming with vernal flora, 

 but with this unusual cold weather we trem- 

 ble for the fruit crop of that region. "With 

 the ground frozen over three inches deep 

 here in Central Illinois, surely they must 

 have frost two hundred miles south of us, 

 yet they can lose half the blossom buds and 

 have more than enough for an abundant 

 crop. 



To-day is the 20th of March, and the 

 snow lays in thin patches, and the ground 

 is frozen full three inches deep. Our sow- 

 ing of spring wheat of the last two days of 

 February is sprouted an inch, and a few 

 warm days will bring up; that sown the 

 13th is only swelled. The weather has been 

 cold and backward, freezing nightly two to 

 three inches, and thawing out during the 

 day, which will severely try the winter 

 wheat. Had the weather been attended 

 with drying winds, it would have proved 

 more disastrous. On the dry upland the 

 soil is little disturbed by frost, but in all 

 moist locations we have never seen it so 

 badly thrown up ; hedges and fruit trees in 

 such places are badly injured. In a depres- 

 sion that runs through our garden plat of 

 three acres, and extends into the nursery, in 

 some parts of which the water stood on the 

 surface, and in others within three or four 

 inches of the surface, in digging a small 



hole ; we cut a drain of two and a half feet 

 deep early this month, and put in tile. The 

 result is, that the heaving of the soil has 

 been arrested as fully as on the dry upland, 

 while a large stream of water continues to 

 be discharged from "the drain, though only 

 five hundred feet in length. Not half of 

 the spring wheat is yet sown in this part of 

 the State, while at the north no attempt has 

 been made in that direction. 



In the warm afternoons the farmers are 

 after fruit trees, many of them having fitted 

 their grounds last fall. This shows a grow- 

 ing disposition for fruit, and at the same 

 time presents the pleasing aspect of home 

 making. 



The selling out mania is past, and our 

 farmers are becoming content; for, notwith- 

 standing the dolorous complaint of hard 

 times, the country has made substantial pro- 

 gress, and the farmers are richer to day than 

 in the spring of 1857, before the crash of 

 banks and the prostration of trade. We 

 have become industrious, economieal, and 

 more moral; there has been, it is true, a 

 large winnowing of chaff from (he wheat, 

 while the chaff is no worse, the wheat is all 

 the better for the winnowing. The curse of 

 too much land has been pretty well eradica- 

 ted, and in its place comes a desire for better 

 culture ; worthless agricultural implements 

 have been discarded, and the more valuable 

 ones retained and better housed. We look 

 back over the past four years with no partic- 

 ular regret, for with its trying ordea. it has 

 brought forth bright days of promise, while 

 we shall now be all the better capable of ap- 

 preciating its value. It has taken off the 

 artificial — the glare of show — and given us 



