AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
ADAPTED TO THE 
IUarm, Grarden, and TUIonseliold. 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN -WASHINGTON. 
OSSAUfGE JUDD, A. M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842. 
$1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBERS 10 CENTS. 
vol. xix.— No. 12 . NEW-YORK, DECEMBER, 1860. [NEW series—N o. 167. 
op Office at 41 Park-Row, (Times Building.) 
Sgp- Contents, Terms, &c., oil pages 376-77. 
Entered according to act of Congress in tho year 1860, 
by Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
New-York. Jgp’N. SS.—Every Journal is invited freely 
to copy any and all desirable articles, if each article or 
illustration copied, be duly accredited to the American 
Agriculturist . ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
3imcricrt« SKgricuItuvtfi in (Herman. 
The AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST is published in 
both the English and German Languages. Both Editions 
are of the same size, and contain, as nearly as possible, 
the same Articles and Illustrations. The German Edition 
is furnished at the same rates as the English, singly or in 
clubs. A club may be part English, and part German. 
December. 
“ If now in beaded rows, drops deck the spray, 
While Phoebus grants a momentary ray, 
Let but a cloud’s broad shadow intervene, 
And stiffened into gems the drops are seen , 
And down the furrowed oak’s broad southern side 
Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide. 
Though night approaching, bids for rest prepare, 
Still the flail echoes through the frosty air, 
Nor stops till deepest shades of darkness come, 
Sending at length the weary laborer home.” 
Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Bov. 
We have now reached the shortest days of the 
year, and every thing stands in striking contrast 
with the long bright days of June. We have 
hare, desolate branches, for the sea of living 
green; a robe of snow on every field, for the ver¬ 
dant turf; sheeted ice on every stream and 
lake, for the rippling waters ; cloud and storm, 
for the sunny skies of Summer. Nature bids us 
pause and look hack over the vanished months. 
It is a time to sum up the results of the year, 
not only to square business accounts with our 
fellow men, but to sit in judgment upon our own 
relations to the soil, and to society. One’s man¬ 
hood is measured quite as much by his farming, 
as by the offices he fills, by his plowing and sow- 
ing, by his building and adorning, as by his 
speech making and voting. We may measure 
ourselves quite as well by the plowshare as by 
the badge of official place. A Justice of the 
Peace may be greatly wanting in justice toward 
his soil. A deacon may be unrighteous toward 
his farm and stock. A militia colonel may be 
cowardly and inglorious upon his own acres. 
A governor may tolerate all sorts of insubordi¬ 
nation and bad citizenship among the subjects 
of his farm. Weeds may grow rampant and 
waste the riches of his soil in riotous living. 
Goodness and greatness in our relations to so¬ 
ciety, do not imply these virtues in relation to 
the acres that are given us to be subdued, cul¬ 
tivated, and beautified. 
We, can not very well divert our minds from 
this theme now. The clod is frozen, and the plow 
will not turn it. All the implements of husband¬ 
ry have gone into Winter quarters. The flocks, 
the trees, the shrubs, the grasses, are all hyber- 
nating. We can do little out of doors to advan¬ 
tage now, but we can do a large business within, 
in these brief days of Winter. The weather 
shuts us up to self communion and to reflection 
upon the events of the past. The Winter with 
icy finger seems to interrogate every tiller of the 
soil, what sort of farmer art thou ? What sort 
of virtues does your business develop ? A man’s 
business has something to do with his charac¬ 
ter, but the principles on which he conducts it, 
have much more to do with it. You have reach¬ 
ed another stage in life’s journey, and have time 
to consider what your business and your mode 
of managing it, are doing for you. 
Are you a wise man, tested by your business 
capacity ? In the good old times when we were 
boys, they used to charge us with having eyes 
bigger than the stomach, and the heap of un¬ 
used food upon the plate was an argument in 
favor of that position, rather hard to meet. There 
is not a little farming showing the same kind of 
wisdom. The tiller of the soil is apt to have very 
large eyes, supposing that he adds to his wealth 
as he adds to his acres. With only capital 
enough to work thirty acres, he buys three 
hundred, and his large farm keeps him a small, 
poor man as long as he lives. He sighs for more 
land, and looks to this as the remedy for his pov¬ 
erty. The most profitable acre that he culti¬ 
vates, does not pay him ten dollars above the ex¬ 
penses of working it, while his neighbor of few 
acres, gets one, and sometimes two hundred dol¬ 
lars an acre net. Every year the large landed 
proprietor but small capitalist, comes out with 
little or nothing beyond working expenses, and 
this gives a sad coloring to his whole life. He 
succeeds in nothing that he attempts. Is this 
passion for more land, when we have not the 
means to use a little well, wise ? Is the reader 
related to one of these large landholders and 
poor farmers ? Now is a good time to vindicate 
your reputation for wisdom; to sell off your un¬ 
used acres and to turn over a new leaf in hus¬ 
bandry. 
Are you a just man? You received some 
twenty years ago, perhaps, a good farm. It was 
in good heart then, making fifty bushels of corn, 
thirty bushels of wheat, and two or three hun¬ 
dred of potatoes to the acre, without much ma¬ 
nure. Possibly this farm has run down under 
your management, so that it does not produce 
half the quantity of products, or carry half the 
stock it did, when it first came into your posses¬ 
sion. It has been over cropped and under ma¬ 
nured, so that of necessity it has given out. You 
will say the farm ■ was yours, and you have a 
right to do what you will with your own. But 
your horse is your own, yet you have no right 
to abuse him. Your house is your own, but you 
have no right to set fire to it. Cruelty to brutes, 
and arson are crimes recognized in the civil 
code. The soil, of course, has no sensibilities, but 
it may be abused nevertheless. It is combusti¬ 
ble, and if you have reduced its productive ca¬ 
pacity one half, you have as really burnt up your 
farm, as if you had touched it with a. match. 
You have sold off hay, or consumed it upon 
your farm, without saving the manure of your 
stock. The hay, corn, and other vegetable pro¬ 
ducts took large quantities of carbonaceous mat¬ 
ter from the soil, and it lias been dissipated in 
the atmosphere, through the lungs of the ani¬ 
mals that consumed it. The process has been 
slow, but it has been really burnt up and scat¬ 
tered to the four winds through your agency. 
The farm of twenty years ago belonged to the 
commonwealth, as well as to you. It was a 
part of the possessions of a state, held in trust 
for posterity. It received the protection of law, 
and you were under obligations for this protec¬ 
tion of your interests, to hand down the soil not 
only unimpaired but improved, for the use of 
posterity. You have been made secure in the 
enjoyment of all the fruits of your industry, and 
you were bound as a good citizen to augment 
the resources of the State, and to make the soil 
better for your living on it. If we look a little 
beneath the surface, we shall find moral delin¬ 
quency in bad husbandry. No man has a right 
to impair the commonwealth, and dissipate the 
inheritance of future generations. It is unjust. 
Are you a cultivated man ? This is of infinite¬ 
ly more importance than the cultivation of your 
acres. Are body, mind, and heart duly devel¬ 
oped, so that all your friends know and esteem 
you as something more than a farmer ? Doe 3 
this self culture show itself in the adornment of 
your home ? The farmer, of all men, has the 
best opportunity to cultivate his taste, and to 
make the most of himself as a man. He is daily 
in the school of the great Architect, and may 
have constant communion with the fairest forms, 
the brightest colors, and the sweetest sounds in 
Nature. The fading stars, the purpling dawn, 
and the rising sun, usher in his morning, and the 
gorgeous coloring of the evening with its ever 
new pictures of illumined cloud, are his for a 
perpetual possession. Spring comes with its 
bursting buds and opening flowers, and Sum¬ 
mer with its garlands of roses, its meadows of 
perfumed grasses, and its forests of freshest ver¬ 
dure, to educate him in the love of the beautiful. 
Of all ornaments to a home, trees, shrubs, and 
flowers are, at once, the most accessible, and the 
most charming. Without them, the master piece 
of the arcliitect in the country is incomplete. 
With them, tastefully arranged, the humblest 
cottage is redeemed from ugliness, and made a 
pleasing object in the landscape. Is vour soul 
so far cultivated that it has found expression in 
the tree-planted avenue; in the lawn with its 
edging of forest, or belt of evergreens; in the 
trellis, loaded with roses; and in the flowei 
border, peopled in its season, with a throng 
more gorgeous than the attendants of princes ? 
These arc marks of the cultivated farmer. 
