Agriculture is the most healthful , the most useful , and the most noble employment of man .— Washington. 
VOL. VI. NEW YORK, MAY, 1847. NO. V. 
A. B. Allen, Editor. 
ADAPTATION OF OUR PAPER FOR GENE¬ 
RAL CIRCULATION THROUGHOUT THE 
UNITED STATES. 
The complaint is often made, that our paper being 
printed at the north or east, is not adapted to the 
wants of the south and west. This, if true, is a 
matter of serious consequence to us and our sub¬ 
scribers. Let us examine it for a moment, and see 
what is the force of the objection. 
Our paper treats of every description of domestic 
animals and poultry ; their characteristics, breeds, 
the best and the worst; their advantages and disad¬ 
vantages ; their mode of breeding, feeding, rearing 
and treatment; their uses, profits, management, &c., 
&c. It also treats of all cultivated crops, including 
fruits, shrubbery, &c.; the best seeds, mode of plant¬ 
ing, cultivating, gathering and preparing for mar¬ 
kets ; the general principles of vegetation and the 
laws of vegetable life. It also treats of the princi¬ 
ples of mechanics as applied to machinery used by 
farmers and planters ; the best machinery and im¬ 
plements for agriculture, their uses and the particu¬ 
lar superiority of some over others, and their adapt¬ 
edness for particular purposes, &c. It also gives 
the latest improvements in those implements which 
may have been made, and suggests others; tells 
where they are to be found and the benefits that 
will follow from their use. It also specifies new 
objects of cultivation, and how they may be better 
prepared for a profitable market and more general 
use. These are a part only of the objects of our 
paper; yet they, with the other subjects treated, 
are of universal interest and general application. 
Nineteen-twentieths of all that is to be found in it 
is of the same use to one part as to any other part 
of America. Yet we find people constantly object¬ 
ing that it is not printed in their particular section 
of country, and that it is not suited to their wants. 
Does it make any difference where a boy acquires 
Harper & Brothers, Publishers. 
his education, provided it be a good one and he be 
correctly taught ? Where he studies his profession 
of divinity, medicine, or even law ? Cannot he take 
the principles he has acquired, and apply them 
equally well in any part of the Union ? Is not the 
blessed sun-light of heaven, the rain, the dew, the 
heat and the frost, though sometimes differing in 
degree, of equal relative effect wherever they are 
felt, whether within the tropics or the polar circles, 
the eastern or western hemisphere ? 
There are, to be sure, some few articles of cultiva¬ 
tion, which by their very natures are confined to 
particular climes and localities. The orange and 
the fig, the sugar cane, cotton plants and rice, are 
confined to a section of North and South America; 
yet that section is a broad one, and spaced through 
many degrees of longitude and latitude. These are 
largely treated through our columns, and probably 
more fully than in any other journal in America. 
Our pages are constantly open to new suggestions 
and approved modes of cultivation, and any intelli¬ 
gent writer from any section of the country has a 
full opportunity of having his views spread out 
before the community through them. Why not 
then embrace the information herein contained, and 
diffuse it broad-cast over the land ? 
If the question were as to a choice between a 
good paper printed here or there, it were another 
matter. But, throughout extensive regions this is 
not the case, and it is either a good paper at the 
east, or none at all; and even if there were one for 
any particular section of country, we might still 
urge a general circulation for our own ; for no one 
will embrace all that is important to be known. 
Then the price of our periodical is so cheap, so 
utterly insignificant, that each farmer may well af¬ 
ford to take a dozen for gratuitous distribution 
without feeling the expense, and indeed, with the 
certainty of being ten-fold repaid annually for the 
