AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
265 
prepared, and their whole effort can be directed 
to getting together the articles for exhibition. 
"Wisconsin State Agricultural Society.— 
This Society held their annual meeting on the 
17th of May, and made arrangements for hold¬ 
ing a Fair at Milwaukie, on the 3d, 4th, and 5th 
of October. The officers for this year are— 
President — E. W. Egerton, Waukesha. 
Secretary —Albert C. Inguam, Madison. 
Treasurer — Samuel Marshall, Madison. 
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CONNECTICUT RIVER STEAMBOATS. 
For those who are called by business or plea¬ 
sure, to visit central or northern New-England, 
we know of no cheaper, safer, or more pleasant 
route than that by the way of the Connecticut 
river Steamers. Travelers can go on board at 
4 o’clock P. M. at New-York, spend the evening 
as comfortably as if in a home parlor, lodge in 
ample state rooms, and in the morniDg wake up 
at Hartford refreshed, and ready to take any 
one of the early trains that leave that city for 
the east, west, north, and south. In like man 
ner those leaving Hartford at 34 P. M., wake at 
New-York the next morning. 
On Monday of last week, we made this trip on 
the Granite State, which is one of the strong¬ 
est built and safest boats that leave New-York 
harbor. Her chief officers are captain Joseph 
H. King ; mate, Elias H. Snow ; clerk, II. B. 
Clark; chief engineer, Albert C. Wilson. 
That these officers are gentlemen in every sense 
of the word, a multitude of those who have tra¬ 
veled with them will abundantly testify. Hav¬ 
ing in former years been often called over this 
route on business, we had come to recognize 
Mr. Snow as one of its indispensible attachee- 
He began his labors here when a boy, and for 
22 years has hardly failed of passing daily be¬ 
tween Hartford and New-York, whenever the 
river has not been blocked by ice. We would 
give no little sum to see a full list of the Yan¬ 
kee notions that have during this long period 
been entrusted to his care, while on their way to 
the metropolitan city from Middletown, Hart¬ 
ford, and a score of other manufacturing towns 
to the northward. It is a great convenience to 
find on the same route through a long series of 
years, the same faithful agents to whom one can 
entrust his business ; and such men should not, 
as they will not, be forgotten by those whom 
they have faithfully served in a business capa¬ 
city. 
- fr %-% - 
[editorial correspondence.] 
VISIT TO A LAKE FARM. 
The town of Shelburn is, perhaps, more 
noted for the farm of Judge Meech, than for 
any thing else. We had long heard of its fame, 
and had a great curiosity to see the largest 
farm in Vermont. Shelburn, as you are aware, 
lies immediately upon the lake, with Burlington 
on the north, and Charlotte on the south. The 
soil is of excellent quality, and is principally 
timbered with hard wood. The land, though 
diversified with hill and valley, is comparatively 
free from stones, and is easily cultivated. A 
part of the township is a clay loam, and makes 
excellent grazing land. 
The home farm borders the lake, and em¬ 
braces twenty-three hundred acres, besides 
eleven hundred acres in the town of Charlotte, 
used principally for pasturage. The whole cov¬ 
ers an area of nearly five and one-third square 
miles, and forms a very respectable farm. We 
approached it by the lake road, which lies close 
along the shore for miles; now threading fields 
of wheat, corn, and rye, and now mowing lands 
and fat pastures; now touching the water, 
fringed with a pavement of slate pebbles, and 
now plunging into a dense thicket of the arbor 
vital. You all the while catch beautiful views 
of the lake, and the mountains beyond, forming 
pictures of loveliness and grandeur, such as you 
will rarely find out of this valley. 
A cluster of tall Lombardy poplars, indicate 
the residence of the Judge, from a distance. 
The house is completely embowered in the trees 
and shrubbery, so that you can form no idea of 
it from the street. You approach the mansion 
through a gate, and a carriage drive, gravelled 
with the pebbles from the shore. A side-walk, 
lined with a hedge, turns off from the main 
path, and takes you over a little bridge, thrown 
across a trickling rivulet that feeds a trout pond. 
As you near the house, flowers of various kinds, 
the cactus tribe in full bloom, geraniums, and 
other green-house plants, in large pots, bid you 
welcome. The mansion is very large and vene¬ 
rable, without any particular pretensions to 
architectural elegance. The grounds are not 
laid out a la Downing, and yet they are in per¬ 
fect taste, if a man’s home should shadow forth 
his own character. Every thing is on a gener¬ 
ous scale, the trees are well grown, and the use¬ 
ful predominates over the beautiful. The crib, 
and carriage-house are on either side of the 
gate, and the milk-house, covered with vines, is 
in close proximity to the trout pond; arrange¬ 
ments, all of them, that the masters would con¬ 
demn. And yet nature so conceals this negli¬ 
gence, that one comes away from this garden 
without suspecting that he has not visited one 
of the most attractive spots in the State. 
In the rear of the mansion is the garden pro¬ 
per. It is surrounded with an arbor vitae hedge, 
some twenty or thirty feet high, which breaks 
off the cold lake winds in the spring, and very 
much softens the climate. Many shrubs and 
plants mature here that belong to a region far¬ 
ther south. The flower garden is handsomely 
laid out, the beds bordered with box, and the 
walks covered with pebbles. We noticed very 
splendid roses, the Persian yellow, and the Moss 
rose, with several climbers, already in bloom. 
The Moss roses were luxuriant, and flourish 
without any protection in the winter. The 
Judge, evidently, did not pride himself upon 
the flowers, so much as upon the vegetable de¬ 
partment of the garden. He led us into the 
potato patch, and with great satisfaction, point¬ 
ed us to vines just ready to blossom. The peas 
were nearly full grown, and the vines well set 
with pods and blossoms. The pie-plant, aspara¬ 
gus, raspberries, and strawberries were luxuri¬ 
ant. Every thing showed good cultivation. It 
may be of service to some of our readers to 
mention the Judge’s cure for the onion fly, a 
pest which very much troubles this crop in all 
this region. He applies soap suds, and has not 
suffered at all from thetr depredations since the 
application. The virtue lies probably in the 
potash, for which insects have a strong dis¬ 
like. 
The Judge has the reputation of being a great 
trout catcher, and it is probably well founded, 
as he boasts of having taken over two hundred 
in a morning, and of eating them all for dinner, 
which latter feat, is either a rebuke to the size 
of Vermont trout, or a compliment to his gas¬ 
tronomy. The trout pond, is a large pool fed by 
springs, and fringed with shrubs, in which were 
a few speckled beauties, taking life very coolly. 
Formerly, it had received a good deal of atten¬ 
tion, and sometimes it had contained as many 
as two hundred trout. They live about four 
years, and attain the size of a pound or more. 
They were fed upon fresh meat of any kind. 
The flesh of the stall-fed animals, he seemed to 
think, was not quite equal to that of the brook- 
caught fish. 
The Judge was so infirm that he was not 
able to go over the farm with us, but we learned 
from him, and from his son, something of the 
system of husbandry pursued upon these broad 
acres. Formerly he devoted a good deal of at¬ 
tention to the raising of grain, having some¬ 
times acres under the plow, and a crop of 
3500 bushels of wheat in a season. But now 
the farm is principally devoted to grazing, and 
sheep and neat cattle were the favorite stock. 
They had some twenty-five hundred of the for¬ 
mer, and seven to eight hundred of the latter. 
They buy more or less in the spring, and sell in 
the fall, for beef. Nothing is done for these pas¬ 
tures, to return to the soil what is taken from 
them, in the wool and lambs of the sheep, and 
in the flesh and bones of the cattle. 
However profitable this system may be for 
the present generation, it is quite manifest that 
it is bad policy for posterity. The soil is not a 
well to give forth its treasures forever, without 
replenishing. What is returned to the soil, in 
the droppings of the cattle, is no compensation 
for the flesh and bones every year carried off in 
stock. This course is stripping the soil of bone- 
earth and potash, which another generation 
must supply, if they would keep good their in¬ 
heritance. It now takes about two acres to pas¬ 
ture an animal through the summer, on an ave¬ 
rage ; and it must have been originally very 
fine soil to do this much, after a generation of 
cropping. 
Good husbandry would require that a portion 
of the profits of these acres should be returned 
to the soil, in the shape of ashes, guano, bone 
dust, or super-phosphate of lime. It should be 
the aim of every tiller of the soil, to enrich his 
farm as well as himself, and to leave the soil, as 
well as society, the better for his influence. 
This policy is better calculated to make men, 
and to build up the State, than the skinning 
process, which so many are contented to pur¬ 
sue. 
On the whole, we are not pleased with large 
farms, and with the style of farming which a 
large landowner is so strongly tempted to pur¬ 
sue. They are pernicious to the soil, a bad 
thing for the social weal, and not in keeping 
with our free institutions. No man with capi¬ 
tal, and labor, in any desired amount, will be 
likely to farm a thousand acres as well as he 
would one hundred. The soil, almost inevita¬ 
bly, would be impoverished. But even if intel¬ 
ligent and liberal in his application of manures, 
the labor necessary to work these thousand 
acres, would be far less valuable to ciety. 
The laborers would generally be kept in a posi¬ 
tion of toil, and rarely rise to the position of 
