AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
FOR THE 
Farm, Garden, and Udonseliold. 
“ AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AND MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.»-WiiHi»«TOir. 
©RANGE JUDD, A.M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842. 
< $1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
( SINGLE NUMBER, 10 CENTS. 
VOLUME XXI—No. 2. 
NEW-YORK, FEBRUARY, 186Q. 
NEW SERIES—No. 181. 
^“Office at 41 Park-Row, (Times Buildings). 
1^“ Contents, Terms, &c., on pp. G1-G4. 
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1861, 
by Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
New-York. jgfpIV. B.—Every Journal is invited freely 
to copy any desirable articles, if each article or illustration 
copied, be duly accredited to the American Agriculturist. 
2fmeiican Slqviculturift in ©ermait. 
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. 
February. 
“ Where now the vital energy that moved, 
While Summer was, the pure and subtle lymph 
Through the imperceptible meandering veins 
Of leaf and flower ? It sleeps ; and the Icy touch 
Of unprolific Winter has impressed 
A cold stagnation on the intestine tide. 
But let the months go round, a few short months, 
And all shall be restored. These naked shoots, 
Barren as lances, among which the wind 
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes, 
Shall put their graceful foliage on again, 
And, more aspiring, and with ampler spread, 
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost.” 
The “ cold stagnation ” of which Cowper thus 
speaks, is every where manifest. All the plants 
are taking their winter sleep, from the tallest 
trees in the forest to the humblest mosses and 
lichens that flourish in their shade. For nearly 
half the year they are as torpid as if they were 
dead. If there is any movement of the vital 
forces within, it is carefully concealed. The 
leaves have fallen from the larger trees and 
shrubs, forming a warm covering for the ~ deli¬ 
cate plants that flourish only in the protection 
of the forest. Then the snow falls and makes a 
still further protection, so that the ground in the 
far north is often frozen no more than in our 
own latitude; if the snow comes early, it may 
not be frozen at all in the deep woods, even in 
the coldest seasons. If we should remove the 
snow we would find the winter-green, and 
prince’s pine, the adder’s tongue with its purple 
hues, and its kindred plant the creeping good- 
yeara with its white veined and netted leaves, and 
the twinberry with its bright scarlet hues, and a 
great variety of other humble plants as fresh as 
in summer. Most men are strangers to the world 
of beauty that lives and has its being under for¬ 
est leaves, or but just above them. It is one of 
the advantages of the passion for Wardian cases, 
which has recently come over our cities and vil¬ 
lages that it is bringing to light these lowly 
dwellers of the retired woods, and secluded 
swamps. A man may live a life time in the 
country, and be familiar with the woods with¬ 
out suspecting that there is more than one 
kind of moss, or of ferns, or of lichens. The 
mosses have a certain family likeness, but a very 
slight examination shows as great a variety 
among them, as among oaks. On almost any 
dozen acres of our moist woodlands, especially 
if they are threaded by small rocky streams 
you may find at least a dozen varieties of the 
mosses, and as many lichens, with several kinds 
of ferns. All but the ferns are quite accessible 
in every mild spell in the winter when the snow 
and ice melt. Nothing can exceed the delicacy 
and beauty of some of these mosses. Some are 
soft and fine as velvet, others of feathery shape, 
and others still, resemble chased silver. Some¬ 
times the lichens and mosses are found inter¬ 
mingled in the same mass, the lichens sprout¬ 
ing out of the velvet sod like stag horns. The 
ferns are only to be found by the fallen leaves 
and stalks of the last season’s growth. Nothing 
can be more charming for the winter parlor than 
one of these Wardian cases tastefully arranged. 
Hyacinths and crocuses flourish under the glass, 
but are not essential to its beauty. Almost all 
plants like those we have mentioned, which grow 
in the shade, will do well in the Wardian case. 
While the plants are taking their winter 
rest we may stop to discuss the hearing of la¬ 
bor upon our prosperity. Adam Smith has well 
said, “ Labor was the first price, the original 
purchase money, that was paid for all things. 
It was not by gold, or by silver, but by labor 
that all the wealth of the world was purchased.” 
The land now divided into farms and owned in 
fee simple was almost worthless to the aborigines, 
who drew from it a scanty, precarious subsist¬ 
ence, by a very rude husbandry. They laid up 
few stores of grain, and were always in peril of 
starvation. It took thousands of acres to sup¬ 
port a single individual. This land has become 
valuable by the labor that has been bestowed 
upon it. Our government assumes that its lands 
are without value, and it surveys them, and gives 
a title deed with the guarrantee of protection for 
one dollar and a quarter an acre, assuming that 
will be the cost of its survey and protection. The 
land grows valuable to us, just as we bestow 
skill and labor upon it, up to a certain limit 
The wild land is made valuable to the pur¬ 
chaser, when he puts a fence around it. He 
may then turn in his cattle and exclude those of 
his neighbor. If he fells the forest, that labor 
increases the value of the land by enabling it to 
yield more grass and hay. He can keep more 
stock and make more butter and cheese for 
market. If he plow, after the forest stumps are 
rotted away, he adds another value to the land 
by making it yield the roots and grains. He 
can keep still more stock and get a still larger 
income from his land. If he lay out still more 
labor and plow an inch or two deeper, he gets 
still larger crops, and puts a higher value 
upon the land. We get a very fair crop in 
some parts of the country if the seed is only 
dropped and covered upon the plowed land. It 
is improved with once cultivating and hoeing. 
But some find that a crop of corn pays abund¬ 
antly for four times cultivating. Not a weed is 
left to draw upon the strength of the soil, or to 
scatter its seed and make work for another sea¬ 
son. The more stirring of the soil, they say, 
the more com. The more labor the more profit. 
Then again, if we add to the plowing and til¬ 
lage the labor of making and applying manure to 
the land it is found to pay better still. Just how 
much we may profitably spend in this way no 
skillful farmer would find it easy to say ; it is 
much beyond any thing now done. Some acres 
produce twenty bushels of corn, others eighty. 
The principal difference is in the labor and ma¬ 
nure which is only labor in another form. The 
foeces of twenty cows for a year occupy but a 
small space and will be mainly wasted without 
care. With labor enough they will make two 
hundred cords of manure. Apply fifty cords of 
manure to an acre and it yields astonishing crops, 
so that all the measures and scales are suspected 
of lying by farmers of the old school, who 
are afraid of hiring too much labor. The gar¬ 
den has more labor and manure than the field, 
and so produces vastly more per acre. 
It would not do to lay down as a maxim with¬ 
out qualification, “the more labor the more 
profit,” there must be a limit; but it is far be¬ 
yond our present practice. It is found to be 
far more profitable to raise eighty bushels of 
corn to the acre than forty, or any less number, 
in the sea-hoard States where corn is high. One 
man works two hundred acres with a single 
hired man and boy, and just gets a living. 
Another, with no more capital, works the same 
sized farm with eight men, the year round, with 
teams to match, and gets rich. He pays the 
men from the products of their own labor, and 
saves a profit to himself. His practice furnishes 
the needed hints as to the direction in which la¬ 
bor should be employed. In our arrangements 
for the coming season, we need a more generous 
faith in the capacities of the soil to reward labor. 
