AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
361 
rousing crop of potatoes, while neighbor John¬ 
son’s was so small 1 Perhaps you scattered a 
good top-dressing of thought over the land before 
you plowed and planted. Farmers generally need 
to do more head-work. r J his should be applied 
to the management of the dairy and orchard, 
sheep and young cattle, rotation of crops, and, in 
short, to all the operations of the farm. 
During the leisure months of Winter, now be¬ 
gun, form your plans for the coming year. Make 
good use of the past. Re view the year now clos¬ 
ing, and see what real improvements you have 
made and where other things will bear a little 
mending. This will make your experience of 
great advantage. Avoid, if possible, former mis¬ 
takes, anil repeat the methods which have proved 
successful. 
Draw up on paper a plan of your farm. After 
suitable deliberation, assign to each field its re¬ 
spective crop, and determine on the way the land 
shall be prepared for the crop. May not the old 
orchard be improved by re-grafting some of the 
trees with new and superior kinds of apples 1 
Perhaps it is time to commence the planting of a 
new orchard. And what a grand undertaking is 
that! How it looks into the future, and what a 
spirit of benevolence it. awakens for those who 
shall come after us ! To determine what sorts 
are, on the whole, the best for a succession of 
Summer, Autumn, and Winter apples is no small 
matter, and requires no little study. These 
Winter months are just the time for that study. 
And so, in reference to all the details of farm¬ 
ing. Give them a careful overhauling. Don’t 
be mere routine farmers, but have a reason for 
every thing, and do everything in the best possible 
way. Put as much thought into your farming as 
you have to spare, and surely it will pay. It may 
not be amiss to turn hack to page 8 (Jan. number), 
and read ’Squire Hunker’s experience on manur¬ 
ing with brains. 
Examples of how Premiums at Fairs are 
Sometimes Awarded. 
Great care is needed in selecting judges for 
awarding premiums at our agricultural fairs. They 
should be men, not only qualified to estimate the 
quality and relative value of the particular article 
brought before them, but men also of integrity 
and good sense. Otherwise, their decisions will 
often run wide of the mark of justice. 
As an illustration of our idea, take the follow- 
•ng : At a county fair recently held in the inte¬ 
rior of this State, a premium was offered “ for 
the latgest and best variety of hardy grapes raised 
in the open air.” One gentleman exhibited seven 
varieties of hardy, native grapes, such as the 
Concord, Isabella, Diana, Catawba, Clinton, Del¬ 
aware, &c. Another exhibited ten varieties, 
among which the only native and really hardy 
sorts were the Isabella and Concord ; the 
other eight were kinds commonly raised under 
glass, and suitable only for such culture, viz : 
Black Hamburgh Ztnfindel, Royal Muscadine, 
Child's Superb, Red Chasselas, and the like. He 
had managed to raise them in the open air, by 
dint of burying the tops in Winter, and by giving 
them every advantage of position and nursing in 
the Summer. And, after all, his grapes were not 
fully ripe when exhibited. Yet because he pre¬ 
sented, literally, “the largest variety raised 
in the open air,” he was honored with the pre¬ 
mium. 
J\-»w, the premium itself was of little value to 
eith ;r gentlemen, but the principle involved was 
of some importance. Was it the real design of 
the society in offering that premium, to encourage 
the growth of hot-house grapes in the open air 1 
Was it not their object rather to foster the intro¬ 
duction of desirable hardy grapes ] And did those 
judges act wisely and justly in awarding the pre¬ 
mium as they did 1 
We give this only as an illustration of the 
thought with which we begun. In our view, judg¬ 
es should be governed not only by the letter of 
the premium list, but also by its obvious spirit 
and design. 
The above, written by an associate, calls to 
mind another case that fell under our own observa¬ 
tion this year. At a county exhibition were several 
very large and very fine bunches of hot-house 
grapes, raised by gentlemen of means and leisure, 
which were certainly worthy of mention. On 
the same table were fine specimens of the newer 
hardy outdoor grapes, such as everybody may 
raise. Accompanying the specimens were cards 
detailing the mode of cultivation, the yield, the 
adaptability to general culture, etc. Yet the 
fruit committee were so dazzled with the large 
bunches that they did not deign even to notice 
those less showy, but having a far higher value 
to the masses who were the main suppoiters of 
the society. Such facts speak for themselves; 
comment is unnecessary— Pub. Ed. 
---—o—---- 
Blinks from a Lantern.VI. 
BY DIOGENES REDIVIVUS. 
GOING TO EMIGRATE. 
I am continually reminded in my journeys of 
observation among the farmers, that the office of 
critic, though an unwelcome, is by no means an 
uncommon task. I have plenty of help and sym¬ 
pathy in my work, and oftentimes the most se¬ 
vere criticisms upon a man’s husbandry are his 
own statements of facts. Indeed, most men in 
private conversation would say much worse 
things of themselves and their calling than they 
would be willing to see in print. And this, per¬ 
haps is one of the chief advantages of these lan¬ 
tern glimmerings. They enable us to see farm¬ 
ers at home in their every-day dress, rather than 
fixed up for exhibition in the papers. A shade 
like myself begets no suspicion of “a chiel 
among ’em taking notes,” and talk without fear 
of print. 
It was only yesterday that I returned from a 
visit to Johnson, the neighbor of Higgins. John¬ 
son is the representative of a large class of farm¬ 
ers in the older States. Though the owner in 
fee-simple of a hundred and twenty acres of soil, 
surrounded by a healthy family of children, he is 
miserably poor, and always will be unless he 
changes his method of husbandry. His farm is 
the homestead of the Johnson family, and he 
came into possession at his majority, twenty 
years ago, with only a debt of five hundred dol¬ 
lars for the right of the other heir to the estate. 
The farm was already stocked, and with right 
treatment of the soil, he might long ago have 
been out of debt, and doubled the value of the 
paternal acres. Instead of this we will hear his 
own account of the state of his affairs, as it fell 
from his lips. 
“ You never see sich a country to git a living in, 
in .vour life. It’s jest like the feller going to 
school that walked two steps backward to one 
forrards, and the more he walked the more he 
didn’t git there. Here I’ve ben for twenty years 
or more, digging away like all possessed, working 
airly and late, in season and out of season, and 
I’ll be blamed if I aint further off from being out 
of debt than I was when I started. Sich a ter¬ 
rible poor sile you never see. It is leachy as a 
riddle. You put manure on to it, and it don’t 
stay long enough to say good bye to the corn you 
plant in it. The seasons have changed, or some¬ 
thing else. I don’t get half as much corn arid po¬ 
tatoes to the acre as ny father did, and some of 
the mowing lots, that sed to produce grand crops 
of hay, I have had to turn out to pasture. Fa¬ 
ther used to keep five-aod-twenty head of cattle; 
I have to buy hay very often to get fifteen through 
the Winter. My fathet used to lay up money 
here, and when he died left several thousand dol¬ 
lars in bank stock. I’ve worked harder than he 
ever did, and have n’t even paid up the five hun¬ 
dred dollars I owe Betsey for her right in the 
farm. I am more or less in debt to the black¬ 
smith and shoemaker, to the carpenter and the 
storekeeper, to Tom, Dick and Harry for things 
I couldn’t do without. I have had to buy hay 
and corn, and sometimes I have bmn out of pork. 
I can’t stand it much longer in sich a country 
as this. It makes me mad when I think of it— 
working hard all the while, and etarnally behind 
hand ; not a spare dollar in my pocket from one 
end of the year to the other. I’m going to emi¬ 
grate jest as soon as I can sell out. They say in 
Illinois a feller can grow a hundred bushels of 
corn to the acre, taters without end, and pump¬ 
kins enough to cover the ground. I should jest 
like to set eyes on sich a country, and get out of 
sight of mulleins and daisies for once.” 
Well, before you start, Mr. Johnson, I want you 
to tell me how it happens, that this land which 
produced sixty bushels of corn to the acre, in the 
days of your father, only produces twenty to 
twenty-five now 1 Your farm is a smooth, ara¬ 
ble tract of country, that the Good Being evident¬ 
ly designed for cultivation, and to pay its own 
way. Somebody must take it when you get 
through with it, and it will be of service to your 
successor to know how it has failed. 
“ Can’t tell anything about that. I only know 
that fields, which produced whopping big corn 
when I was a boy, wont produce anything but 
buckwheat now, and hardly enough of that to pay 
for harvesting. I plow and plant jest as father 
did, and put on eight or ten load of barn-yard ma¬ 
nure to the acre, but the corn don’t come, and 
the grass neither. I don’t know what the mat¬ 
ter is.” 
Why is it that your neighbor Higgins gets such 
fine crops of corn ? I see he reports in the trans¬ 
actions of the county agricultural society, ninety 
bushels to the acre, on a field of six acres. His 
farm joins yours, and that six acre field lies upon 
the same plain where you only get twenty bush¬ 
els to the acre. Is there a different climate over 
Higgins* fence ? 
“ I didn’t see that corn measured, and I don’t 
believe there was as much of it, though it was 
a great piece of corn, no mistake. But Higgins 
has money and can buy as much manure as he 
has a mind to, I can’t buy manure.” 
But the report says he did not use much more 
stable manure than you did. The rest was har¬ 
bor mud and salt, and dissolved bones. 
“ That mud and sea-weed is good, I have no 
doubt, but it takes so much labor to get it, and I 
always have as much as the team can do without 
going a mile after manure.” 
But it pays. Ten loads of stable manure, 110 , 
fifty loads of mud and weed spread on the field. 
