478 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November 
means of strong nails. This door weight is 
specially designed for the small doors of 
barns, corn-houses, and other out-buildings. 
Do Agricultural Fairs Pay? 
Mr. Editor :—This topic was up for dis¬ 
cussion at the last meeting of the Farmers’ 
Club, when everybody was hazing round to 
get ready for the Hookertown Fair. 
Pastor Spooner said, “ This club has been 
running nearly thirty years, or ever since the 
year after Hookertown began to read the 
American Agriculturist, and it might seem to 
be rather late to discuss the utility of Agri¬ 
cultural Societies and Shows. Most of our 
folks calculate to go to the fair, and show 
some of their crops and cattle, and must get 
satisfaction out of it in some way, or else 
they would not continue to patronize it. He 
noticed that the pens and cattle sheds kept 
extending every year, and that fruits, flowers, 
and vegetables kept multiplying, and the 
people kept coming in larger numbers, and 
yet he supposed there were people within ten 
miles of Hookertown who had never been to an 
exhibition, and could not see that there was a 
dollar’s worth in it to any body. ‘ ‘ It costs more 
than it comes to.” There may be two sides to 
the question after thirty years of American 
Agriculturist reading and attendance upon 
fairs. Religion is scoffed at because the 
churches have not exterminated all the places 
of vicious resort, and converted all the infi¬ 
dels and heathen, but there is quite as much 
room for scoffing at the slow progress of in¬ 
dustrial reform of any kind. There has been 
manifest change for the better in Hooker¬ 
town, but up in the White Oaks, things stand 
about where they did thirty years ago. 
White beans and potatoes, corn and oats, 
charcoal and wood, are still the leading crops, 
and carts of the same type, and horses of the 
same scare-crow breed are still seen.” 
Jake Frink seemed to be nettled by Pastor 
Spooner’s allusion to the White Oaks, and the 
charcoal business, which his son Kier still 
follows. He said, “I guess there’s more 
truth than poetry in what Mr. Spooner says. 
The White Oaks looks jest as it used to when 
I was a boy, and, for the life o’ me, I don’t 
see enny chance for improvement. Ye see, 
the country is rocky, and the sile takes as 
naterally to white birches, pitch pine, and 
scrub oaks as a duck does to water. If a fel¬ 
ler gets a livin’ at all, up there, he’s got to 
git it selling wood, and charcoal. Nuthin 
else pays, and that don’t much. If a feller 
undertakes to clear up land, it costs more 
than it comes to, to git the stones out, so he 
can plow, and, if he sows rye, or plants corn, 
the crop won’t pay, without manure, and 
where’s your manure coming from when 
ye're ten miles from the shore and sea weed, 
and haven’t got anything but charcoal or 
wood to buy it with? Ye see, it’s up-hill 
business for the White Oaks, and it is no use 
to talk about the fairs doing the White Oak- 
ers enny good. Fact is, they don’t go much, 
and it’s just as well as if they did. And it 
ain’t much better here in Hookertown. He 
knew Deacon Smith and Squire Bunker and 
them folks that had money plenty raised bet¬ 
ter things than they used to, and took pre¬ 
miums, and they might make it pay, but he 
had sent things to the fair for several years, 
but never got a red cent for a premium. My 
wife, Polly, gits premiums on butter, bread, 
and bed quilts, sometimes, and comes home 
so sot up that there’s no livin’ with her for a 
week after the fair. But it don’t seem to be 
for me to git anything in that line, and I 
have pretty much made up my mind that 
the fairs are ‘all talk and no cider.’ ” 
Dr. Blossom, who is Jake Frink’s family 
physician, thought cider might have some¬ 
thing to do with bad luck at the fairs: “I 
have noticed, in my rides through the coun¬ 
try to see patients, that the farmers, who are 
the best patrons of the tippling shops, have 
the least to do with our agricultural fairs. 
The trouble is not altogether in the poverty 
of the soil. Moral habits have quite as much 
to do with good crops, and premiums, as 
sunshine, rain, and fertilizers. I think I can 
pick out every farm, in the circle of my pro¬ 
fessional visits, whose owner frequents the 
tippling shop. There is an untidy look about 
the house, boards off the barn, gaps in the 
fences, bad smells in the barn-yard and pig- 
stys, lean cattle, and unmistakable signs of 
thriftless habits in every direction. Such 
farmers do not read agricultural papers, do 
not have anything to exhibit at the fairs, 
and if they go, it is to see the horse race, to 
make bets, or to swap horses. They do not 
think fairs pay.” 
The Doctor, who is well up in moral re¬ 
form, and loses no opportunity to stick his 
prod into a tippler or smoker, takes a partisan 
view, possibly, of the matter, but there can 
be no doubt that bad habits are among the 
forces that stay the progress of agricultural 
improvement. Brain manure is about the 
best thing on the farm, and there is no better 
place to take in fresh supplies, than at the 
average agricultural fair. They are to be 
welcomed, for the fact that they help to get 
farmers out of the ruts—they are the most 
conservative of all classes of toilers—made 
so very .much by their surroundings. They 
lead, for the most part, a secluded life, cul¬ 
tivating muscle more than brain, and intent 
mainly upon the daily task that is before 
them, and coming to the evening hour too 
weary to read or think much. There is a let 
up of labor at the fair, and a large number 
of new things, tools, seeds, vegetables, fruits, 
cattle, sheep, swine, etc., as well as new 
people to see and talk with. One must be 
very stupid, indeed, whose mind is not forced 
into new channels, and who does not carry 
away from the show many practical sugges¬ 
tions that will help him in the future. These 
suggestions are not money, but in many ways 
will save money, and help to make money. 
The fair makes a farmer’s holiday, and 
if there were no pecuniary profit in it, it 
would be worth all it cost, for this end alone. 
Those of us who were brought up on the 
farm fifty years ago or more, can remember 
when holidays were scarce, and rather poorly 
observed, when they came. There was 
Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and the Militia 
Muster, that afforded the possibility of a little 
relief from servile labor. The opportunities 
for recreation, vain or otherwise, were few 
and far between. On rainy days we might 
go a fishing, and pay for the sport by toil as 
hard as that of the field. No wonder that 
farmers’ boys escaped from the farm to the 
sea, and to the city, at an early age, and the 
girls eschewed cheese and butter making, 
and the household labors of the age of home- 
spun. There is no excuse for that now, and 
the fairs have had much to do with the great 
change that has come over the social life in 
our farming communities. The spinning 
wheels and looms have gone to the garret, 
or been used for kindlings, long ago. Cheese 
and butter factories have taken the place of the 
cheese press and the churn, and there is such 
a thing as leisure for the wife and daugh¬ 
ters in thrifty farmers’ homes. There is in¬ 
telligence and culture, time for reading, and 
music, time for visiting, time for the farmers’ 
club, and for the fair. The change is won¬ 
derful. 
More than this, the fairs have paid finan¬ 
cially, and laid a solid foundation for all this 
improvement in social and esthetic culture, 
which we find in so many rural homes. The 
new ideas gathered at the annual exhibitions 
have been good seed, sown on good ground, 
and have sprung up in golden harvests. The 
Jersey cattle, seen at the fair and purchased, 
have made better butter, and more of it. 
The Southdown sheep have made better mut¬ 
ton, and larger lambs. The drawings of model 
barns, with cellar beneath, have made farm¬ 
ers aware of the great loss of open yards for 
making manure, and of the immense waste 
of feeding hay at the stack yard, through the 
winter. The horse reaper and mower, the 
rake and the tedder, the loader and horse 
fork, the thresher, the cultivators and har¬ 
rows, and other improved implements and 
machines, which transfer heavy work from 
human muscles to the horse, are all making 
money for the farmer. The fair held for the 
State, county, or town, has been a very effec¬ 
tive means of advertising, and, largely as 
they have paid the manufacturers, they have 
paid the purchasers still more. Seeing is 
believing. The usual process at the fair is, I 
came, I saw, I purchased. So you may put 
down the Agricultural Fair as a paying insti¬ 
tution, and don’t you forget it. 
Hookertown. Ct., I Yours to command, 
October 1,1S81. ) Timothy Bunker,. Esq. 
Salamanders, or Water Lizards. 
It was a superstition of the middle ages 
that certain lizards, called Salamanders, had 
the power to extinguish fire and thus pass 
through it unharmed, and many of the poor 
creatures have been destroyed in testing the 
truth of this groundless belief. The Sala¬ 
mander of Europe is common in central por¬ 
tions of that country; it is seven or eight 
inches long, and is black, with large yellow 
spots. We have in this country several al¬ 
lied species, one of the best known of which 
is the Spotted Salamander. It is nearly six 
inches long, bluish-black above and below, 
with a row of yellowish spots on each side. 
This Salamander is abundant in some western 
waters, especially in some of the brackish 
sheets of water in Wyoming Territory. Their 
appearance in their young state, or in what 
corresponds to the tadpole condition in frogs, 
is veiy different from their final and complete 
condition, and it is probable that the unde¬ 
veloped forms of this have been described as 
distinct species. It is closely related to the 
Mexican Axolotl, which has been described 
by travellers as “a fish with legs.” There 
are several other Salamanders, occurring 
from New England to Florida and Texas. 
They are usually found in moist places, and 
are perfectly harmless, however forbidding 
they may be in appearance. They may be re¬ 
garded, on the whole, as beneficial, as they de¬ 
vour a large number of injurious insects and 
their larvae. See illustration on next page. 
