226 
RURAL HOURS. 
in other parts of the State ; we have just heard that two hundred 
head of cattle, and two thousand head of sheep, have been driven 
into our county from St. Lawrence, to be pastured here during 
the drought. Generally, our grass and foliage are refreshed by 
passing showers, during the warmest weather, and the beauty of 
the verdure is a source of great pleasure to those who come from 
the brown fields about New York and Philadelphia. 
The crops are those which belong naturally to a temperate, 
hilly country. Wheat, oats, buckwheat, maize, potatoes, and bar- 
ley are the most common, with some turnips and carrots for fod- 
der. Rye is rather rare. Hop-grounds are frequent, for al- 
though this is not much of a beer-drinking community, yet a 
large amount of hops is carried hence to the sea-ports for Em'o- 
pean markets. These fields are said to be very profitable for the 
owners, but they are by no means so pleasing in a landscape as 
grain or pasture lands. Those two vines, the hop and the grape, 
so luxuriant and beautiful in their natural state, alike lose much 
of their peculiar grace, when cultivated in the common way; 
at a distance, a hop-ground and a vineyard very much resemble 
each other, though the hop is trained much higher than the grape ; 
the poles and stakes in each case go far toward destroying the 
beauty of the plants. Both these vines, by-the-by, the grape 
and the hop, are natives of this part of the country. 
The new disease among the potatoes, which has already done 
so much mischief in past years, has only shoAvn itself this season 
in some few fields. Generally, the crop looks quite well in our 
neighborhood. This disease seems to be one of the most singular 
on record in the vegetable world, unaccountable in its origin, and 
so very general in both hemispheres ; is it not the only instance 
