128 
A WORD TO THE DISAFFECTED, ETC. 
haps America, as a puff advertisement in favor of 
shorthorns and Devons, and to the great prejudice 
of a far better breed than either of them, under the 
sanction of the society." Now, who shall say 
that the Herefords are not already triumphant 1 
Where is our friend Sotham, and the other Here- 
ford breeders of America ] Have they nothing to 
offer in this matter ? Can you equal the famous 
Hereford bull, bred by the late Mr. Jefferies ? He 
weighed, not fully fattened, three thousand, nine 
hundred and twenty pounds ! There is a big 
"bossy calf" for your comfort! But is he any 
better for being big ? Please to answer us that, 
gentlemen. To be sure, you may say that a crab 
apple is small, with little or no nutrition, and so 
execrably sour that a pig would squeal if forced to 
eat it ; while a pippin and a belle bonne are large, 
fair to look at, of delicious flavor, and highly nu- 
tritious. Sball we call the native scrubs, then, 
the " land crabs," and the aristocratic Herefords 
the ' : pippins" and "belle bonnes" of cattle ? 
♦ 
A WORD TO THE DISAFFECTED. 
Feeling a peculiar interest in that portion of the 
rising generation, who have been reared under the 
benign influence of agricultural occupations, and 
being also desirous of eradicating a prevalent error 
in the opinion of many of the disaffected, you will, 
I presume, readily afford me a brief space in the 
pages of your journal for expressing a few senti- 
ments, which, I humbly trust, may find a welcome 
response from a large majority of your younger 
readers. 
The subject on which I purpose a short disserta- 
tion is one, which, to me, has frequently occasioned 
no small astonishment ; and though, however 
strange may by others be regarded, is, nevertheless, 
one whose lamentable reality demands an immedi- 
ate counteraction. 1 particularly allude to an alarm- 
ing inclination among our country lads and lasses 
to forsake the comfortable retirement of home, in 
exchange for the deceitful allurements of city em- 
ployments. Infatuated with the mistaken idea of 
speedily enhancing their temporal welfare by en- 
gaging in some branch of an already overstocked 
trade, and " wonderfully tickled" by the vain novel- 
ties of the metropolis, they abandon friends, associ- 
ates, and farms, pressing onward to the city, confi- 
dently anticipating the consummation of a thousand 
longing desires. The evident consequence of such 
actual multitudes concentrating in all our consider- 
able towns and cities from every direction of the 
country, must, undoubtedly, be a marked decline 
both of wages and of labor; and those who have 
unluckily sacrificed the independent pursuit of agri- 
culture for this entire imaginary benefit, will almost 
invariably, sooner or later, find that, like Franklin of 
old, they have paid dear for their whistle. Even 
under whatever advantageous circumstances they 
may perchance be situated in their new career, 
there are innumerable and unforseen moral dangers 
to which they are unavoidably constantly exposed, 
and which daily threaten the ruin of the thoughtless 
and unguarded. 
Beset by a host of vicious companions, and be- 
guiled by every variety of temptation, it undoubt- 
edly requires a powerful determination to avert de- 
struction and maintain an unblemished character. 
In view of perhaps an eventual disappointment and 
the uncertain nature of business, together with the 
imminent risk of the loss of virtue, peace, and hap- 
piness, I am at length constrained to believe that 
my disaffected young friends relinquish their native 
lands without the slightest consideration of the ef- 
fects. Were calm reflection bestowed upon the 
subject by those who are afflicted with the town 
fever, I am confident that a general re-action would 
ensue, and the rage for citizenship would gradually 
subside under the more genial influence of hus- 
bandry. Having myself had some experience in 
the above matters, and deeming it especially fortu- 
nate in being able to return to the discharge of the 
duties of the farm ; I should be particularly gratified 
and rewarded, were my humble pen the means of 
saving a single youth from the inevitable dangers 
attendant on city life and occupations. 
Plowboy. 
Greenwood, March 1st, 1849. 
We think the views of " Plowboy" may further 
be elucidated by the following graphic extract from 
an exceedingly piquant article, by one of our con 
temporaries, on the delights of living in hotels in 
this city. He maintains that our people have a 
passion for gregariousness, and that this passion 
can only be accounted for on the supposition that 
our citizens have a horror of privacy : — 
" They are willing," says he, " to sacrifice com- 
fort, and, in some degree, personal independence, to 
gratify ambition for living in public life. No fool- 
ish tradition of the ' home of his childhood' haunts 
the memory of the Gothamite ; and no lingering love 
of locality made sacred by the reminiscences of 
youth, interferes to check his vagrant habits. No 
sooner does he enter his teens than all family at- 
tractions disappear before his gregarious love — his 
desire is to live in a world of strangers. He is born 
in one house, cuts his teeth in another in a distant 
part of the city, is vaccinated in a third, and wears 
his first jacket in a fourth, and so on until he com- 
mences life for himself, and passes from one board- 
ing house to another every three months. ' The 
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
their nests ;' but the son of Gotham has but a 
room of ten feet by eight, which he inhabits. For 
the peace of home, he has the monotony of the 
' reading room.' He prefers the excitement of the 
bar room to the amenities of domestic life. His 
happiness is at the mercy of his fifty fellow board- 
ers, who neither know nor care anything about 
him. His comfort depends upon the chambermaid, 
and his health on his power of resisting tempta- 
tion. If he is sick, his pain is soothed by the hur- 
ried attentions of an Irish waiter : and if he dies, he 
performs that final operation amid the noise of slam- 
ming doors or strong gongs, and is buried as quick- 
ly as possible, to make room for another." 
The Value of Bones as a Manure. — It is a fact 
well established by agricultural chemistry, that a 
single pound of bones contains as much phosphoric 
acid, (one of the essential ingredients of wheat,) 
as one hundred pounds of wheat. Notwithstand- 
ing this, it is true that many families in the United 
States waste more bones than would be required to 
manure, in this respect, the amount of the wheat 
crop they consume. 
