194 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMEE. 



July 



broken faith of the cotton States. No other 

 Western State could stand this infraction 

 with the same impunity and stand up against 

 it with an unimpaired integrity, for no other 

 State in the valley of the great river has 

 such wealth of soil with which to replenish 

 her exhausted treasuries. We have seen our 

 own State bonds sold at sixteen cents on the 

 dollar, and yet in a short time recover her 

 credit and send them up to par. Is not this 

 a proof of industry, climate and soil that 

 should not be overlooked in the present cri- 

 sis as elements that will soon obliterate all 

 traces of the present financial embarassment ? 

 We think so. 



-*»-- 



Life in the Sea. 



Briuiful of life at its surface, the sea would be 

 encumbered if the prodigious power of produc- 

 tion was not kept somewhat in check by the an- 

 tagonist power of destruction. Only imagine 

 that every herring has from fifry to seventy 

 thousand eggs! If every egg was to produce a 

 herring, and every herring fitly thousand more, 

 were there not an enormous destruction going on, 

 the ocean wuuld very soon be solidified and putri- 

 fied. The great cetacea drive them toward the 

 shores, ever and anon diiving into their ranks 

 and swallowing up whole shoals. The whiting 

 eat their fry ; cod again devour the whiting. Yet 

 even here the peril of the sea, an excess of fecun- 

 dity shows itself in a still more terrible shape. 

 The cod has up to nine million of eggs, and this 

 creature, of such formidable powers of materni- 

 tp, has nine months of love out of twelve. No 

 wonder that the fishery of this productive fish 

 has created towns and colonies. But even then, 

 what would the power of man be, opposed to 

 such fecundity ? He is assisted by others, among 

 which the sturgeon takes chief rank. Then, 

 again, the sturgeou itself is a very fecund fish. 

 This devourer of cod has itself fifteen hundred 

 thousand eggs. Another great devourer is not 

 proportionately re-productive, and that is the 

 shark. Viviparious, he nourishes the young 

 shark in his bosom, his feudal inheritor, who is 

 born terrible and ready armed. Hence are sharks 

 called in many countries sea-dog. — Blackwood. 



—- 



Preaching vs. Practice. 



Ed. Farmer : I have been reading a great 

 many of the agricultural papers lately, and have 

 been greatly amused at the wide hits of the mark 

 that many of tiie writers make. I, for one, can- 

 not see the utility of filling up agricultural 

 journals with articles deploring the poor cul- 

 ture of farmers, their slackness and general 

 ignorance of all that pertains to scientific 

 farming. Now if you will take the most slovenly 

 farmer tha^you can find, and ask him why he 

 does not do so and so and he will tell you that it 



takes too much time. But don't you know that 

 if you plow six inches instead of three that you 

 will get more corn ? Yes, I know that well 

 enough, but my team gets so poor that I can't 

 plow more than half as much. Don't you know 

 that it takes twice bs much corn to feed those 

 prairie alligators that it does improved Sufi"olks or 

 Berkshires. Oh yes, I know that, but then they 

 don't cost so much at first, and then corn is cheap, 

 and I can make up in number what they lack in 

 weight. Don't you know that enough corn is 

 spoiling on top of that crib to pay for lumber to 

 cover it. Yes, but I haven't time to haul it to 

 market now, it's only worth fifteen cents, and I 

 can't afford to go to so much expense for nothing, 

 and so on to the end of the chapter. 



Now, Mr. Editor, this man knows all this, 

 and what is the use of taking up so much valua- 

 ble space in the papers telling him of what he 

 already knows. Such a man can only be influ- 

 enced by force of example. I have known of, 

 and now do, whole neighborhoods that farmed in 

 this same slovenly way, wouldn't plow deep be- 

 cause teams got poor and coulint plow as much, 

 teams didn't get fat because they had to tend to 

 so much, teams couldn't stand a hard day's work 

 in hajitig and harvest because they were poor, 

 and when the next spring's work opened, Avbat 

 with hauling wood, poor stable, poor feed, and 

 no care, our easy friend has two horses laid out 

 to bleach, or mere skeletons that have been mort- 

 gaged. He also has a lot of their slab-s'.ded 

 hogs to sell that bring one to two cents less per 

 pound than sleek well fattened ones, acd he has 

 sold a thousand bushels of corn for three cents a 

 bushel less because the rain had rotted so much 

 of it, yet he couldn't afford to sell five hundred 

 bushels at fifteen cents and buy lumber to cover 

 it. Now there's no use talking and telling him 

 of this ; figuring won't work, for he knows that 

 they may be put to bad uses, and he dont under- 

 stand the horse power figuring. Preaching is 

 of no avail. But I tell jou what will work, prac- 

 tical demonstration, that's what will do the busi- 

 ness ; an ounce of it is worth more than a' dozen 

 pounds of preaching. (By the way this rule will 

 apply in other places as well as farming.) Let a 

 man come into such a neighborhood that takes 

 pains, and one that demonstrates all that he does, 

 and in a year half his neighbors will begin to 

 imitate, and in a few years the whole community 

 will have changed. Such is the force of exam- 

 ple. Now let us have less preai^hing and more 

 practice. Let these men that write all these fine 

 articles for the papers practice a little of what 

 they preach and you will see a change for the 

 better. * 



