AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
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EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. ) A Aa® iUilisyfiiaAJ it&O f SINGLE NUMBERS lO CENTS. 
VOL. XVII.—No. 3] NEW-YORK, MARCH, 1858. [new series— No. 134. 
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by Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
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culturist. ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
March. 
“ The stormy March is come at last, 
With wind and cloud and changing skies ; 
I hear the rushing of the blast, 
That through the snowy valley flies. 
Ah passing few are they, who speak, 
Wild stormy month ! in praise of thee; 
Yet though thy winds are loud and bleak, 
Thou art a welcome month to me. 
For thou to Northern lands again 
The glad and glorious sun dost bring, 
And thou hast joined the gentle train. 
And wear’stthe gentle name of Spring." 
Bryant. 
To the husbandman, this month is usually the 
Beginning of the year. He is too busy with pres¬ 
ent duties, too full of hope for the future, to be 
much affected with the aspect of cloud and storm 
which Nature generally assumes. The Winter is 
over and gone, and he comes forth from its long 
rest, invigorated and refreshed for the duties of 
another season. He welcomes March as the un¬ 
covered earth welcomes the glad smiles of the 
• eturning sun. If relapses of Winter come, they 
are of brief duration, and every period of melting 
snow and ice grows longer until all are dissolved, 
and the young blades of grass show their delicate 
green above the brown stubble of the former year. 
The Winter now closed has been as remark¬ 
able for its mildness, as the three immediately 
preceding were, for their severity. The weather 
has been, for the most part of the time, enjoyable 
and inviting to out door labors. Farmers have 
extensively improved it, in repairing walls and 
fences, in digging ditches, and in laying tile, in 
carting manure and muck, and in plowing sward 
lands. The Spring work with all enterprising cul¬ 
tivators, is in a state of great forwardness, and if 
Nature follows her usual analogies, we may look 
for an early starting of vegetation. The past three 
Springs have been unusually late, and all crops 
have been put in behind time. This Spring we 
may hope for an earlier call to the pleasant duties 
f planting and sowing. 
Thus we complete another cycle of those varia¬ 
tions, for which our American climate is so very 
remarkable, and which has so important an influ¬ 
ence in forming the characters of our people. 
March is a sort of epitome of our climate for the 
whole year. The changes of temperature are 
sudden, and not unfrequently extreme, giving us 
within a few days, a taste of Summer, Autumn, 
Winter and Spring. Now we have a zero night, 
and again a mid-day gush of Summer heat, that 
would do credit to July. But these extremes are 
very brief, and very trying to people of delicate 
constitutions. They are, no doubt, the occasion 
of much of the pulmonary disease, which takes 
the lead in the tables of mortality in all parts of 
the country. But we have always suspected, 
that the imprudence of people had quite as much 
to do with this class of diseases as the climate. 
It is quite certain that the keenest of March winds 
has an invigorating influence upon the lungs of 
some of us, while others grow pale and shrivel 
under them. Physicians tell us, and the fact is 
apparent without their testimony, that the dis¬ 
ease which preys upon these delicate organs, nev¬ 
er enters them directly, but always makes its ap¬ 
proach through other avenues of the body. We 
may breathe the coldest or wettest atmosphere 
without any unpleasant sensation at the lungs, if 
we are so clad as to keep the whole surface of the 
body at a comfortable and uniform temperature. 
It has been demonstrated by travellers within the 
tropics, and upon the Arctic seas, that the lungs 
can endure, with perfect safety, much greater ex¬ 
tremes of heat and cold, than we ever experi¬ 
enced here. We can but suspect then, that March 
winds are somewhat slandered, and that impru¬ 
dence in dress has slain its thousands, where the 
climate has slain its hundred's. With the feet kept 
warm and dry, and the other parts of the body 
protected from sudden changes, the lungs are as 
inpregnable in their safety as the brain or the 
stomach. With thin shoes and wet feet, bare 
arms and bare neck, with the late hours and fast 
living which fashion requires, it were a miracu¬ 
lous thing if “coughs, colds and consumptions,” 
in the familiar language of the quack advertise¬ 
ments, were not the order of the day. 
Climate, no doubt, has an influence upon health 
and physical character, but it‘ought not to be held 
responsible for the willful ignorance and moral in¬ 
firmities of the people. It is a common impres¬ 
sion, and perhaps a correct one, that the Anglo- 
Americans are less robust than the Europeans to 
whom they are allied. They have less fullness of 
the muscular system, less breadth of chest, and 
fewer of the common marks of strength and hard¬ 
ihood than their relations across the ocean. 
But notwithstanding this apparent difference in 
physical development, there is no such difference 
in physical achievement. Every one who has had 
opportunity for observation, knows that the la¬ 
borer bred to our farm woik is greatly superior to 
the freshly imported recruit. He excels him. not 
only in his general intelligence, and economy of 
applying strength to work, but in the quickness of 
his motions, and in his power of endurance. Wo 
have often looked with wonder upon the feats per¬ 
formed upon our farms [by American laborers'. 
They seem to be all muscle, and their muscles 
made of steel, so unflagging are their steps, so 
tireless their arms, as they swing the scythe or 
ax. This superior activity, and the energy which 
usually accompanies it, are undoubtedly attribut¬ 
able in part to some peculiar quality in our cli¬ 
mate. 
A man may get an inkling of what that quality 
is, on almost any of these bright March mornings, 
with the wind north-west, and the air a little 
frosty. The very idea of quiet is a burden. He 
is as full of life and electricity as a bird is of song. 
His very step is a pleasure, every blow is a re¬ 
lief to the pent up energy of bis being. He im¬ 
parts his own life to the mettlesome steed that he 
drives, and to the ox that shares his labors in the 
field. A dull team becomes a full blooded Devon¬ 
shire for the morning, and the plow sweeps 
through the tough sod, as if it were at the tail of 
a steam-engine. He has not only the faith that 
removes mountains, but the conscious ability to 
remove them. The stones grow light as he rolls 
them into walls, and all the difficulties of farming 
disappear like frost-work before the morning 
sun. 
There is something in this elastic energy of our 
people, that can not be accounted for by their pe¬ 
culiar training. Voltaire thought that “ climate 
has some influence upon a people, government a 
hundred times more, religion and government 
more still.” But the great French infidel looked 
at this matter through the medium of his own 
prejudices, and made Christianity responsible for 
all the lazaroni and vagabonds of Europe. The 
fact is, we have among us the representatives of 
all the governments and religions of the old world, 
and they very soon become assimilated to our 
physical peculiarities. An important change goes 
on, even in the first generation. The European 
laborer put down upon the Yankee farm, catches 
something of the enterprise of his employer. His 
step and all his motions become quicker, as if our 
genial skies had infused new blood into his veins. 
This changeable climate has had much to do 
with the inventive genius of our people. It has 
suggested all those admirable contrivances for 
keeping us warm in Winter, and cool in Summer. 
How much of human skill and energy have been 
lavished upon heating apparatus, and to what a 
degree of perfection has it at length been brought, 
giving us in our cheerful parlors in mid-Winter, 
the pure air, sifted of its cold, and genial as the 
breath of Summer ! How endless have been the 
generations of Franklin’s and Nott’s and humbler 
names applied to fire frames and stoves, furnaces 
and dumb heaters, mute in words, but discoursing 
eloquently, in very intelligible language, for the 
whole Winter season ! Our fervid Summers have 
called forth those ingenious contrivances for ven¬ 
tilating houses, refrigerators for preserving food, 
and started into existence the ice trade, which 
