AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
75 
Farmers Wide Awake. 
There are all sorts of farmers in the world, 
and they, accordingly, meet with all sorts of 
success. There are intelligent, entcrprizing, 
industrious, economical men ; and over against 
these are ignorant, shiftless, wasteful men, who 
are seldom prosperous. If the lack of activity 
and thorough business habits which prevails in 
many of our farming districts, were suddenly 
transferred to our large cities, and made to per¬ 
vade our bankers, merchants, publishers and 
tradesmen, what a shock it would give to the 
wheel of commerce ! Many a door would soon 
be closed by the sheriff, and grass would grow 
in our streets. Manufactures and trading gener¬ 
ally are conducted with carefulness and econo¬ 
my, with constant attention to details, watching 
against losses, seizing upon all possible advan¬ 
tages, and -with an industry that never tires. 
This and this alone is the royal road to success. 
Now, agriculture, to be prosperous, must be 
conducted in the same way. The farmer must 
be a shrewd, thinking man, one who knows at 
least something of the theory and much more of 
the practice of his calling; knows how to bring 
his lands into the best possible condition and to 
keep them so; knows how to take advantage of 
the market; how to get the best returns from a 
given amount of money and labor; knows how 
to economize, and how, at times and as wisely, 
to make large expenditures, (say, in draining, 
manuring, etc.,) when they are demanded. For, 
in farming, as well as in acts of general benevo¬ 
lence, “there is that giveth and yet increaseth; 
and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, 
,ind it tendeth to poverty.” 
It is the importance of sagacity, prudent fore¬ 
thought, and management, of skill andenterprize 
that we wish now to inculcate. Mere muscular 
labor, however severe and unremitted, is not 
enough; book learning is not enough, if dis¬ 
joined from industry, tact and economy. There 
is an ideal in every farmer’s life, towards which 
he should always be striving to approach. He 
should aim to be a man of general intelligence. 
Aside from the topics of reading and study com¬ 
mon to every well-informed man, it becomes him 
(and it pays) to be familiar as far as possible with 
practical chemistry, meteorology, geology, min¬ 
eralogy, botany, animal and vegetable physiolo¬ 
gy and mechanics. Surely, there is no need of 
mental inactivity here. Nor should he be mere¬ 
ly a man of books and ’ologies. He ought to be 
a practical, sound-minded, industrious, common 
sense man, as familiar with all practical details 
as with theories. There are already many such 
farmers: we only wish there were more. And 
ere long, there will be. 
How a Woman’s Perseverance secured 
a Fine Homestead. 
The following is copied from a recent letter, 
to the American Agriculturist , from one of our 
German subscribers in Tipton County, Ind., and 
is but an imperfect pictureof what has occurred, 
and is still occurring, in many western localities: 
“ About twenty years ago a young couple came 
here, and bought 160 acres. Though the price 
was low, the purchase money nearly exhausted 
their means. They began with hard labor to 
build themselves a future homestead, and 
through all the hardships of their undertaking, 
the young wife was at the side of her husband, 
and even shared his out-door toils. One day, 
when they were both trying to fell one of the 
big oak trees, the man, exhausted and discour¬ 
aged, said: “I think we had better give up, 
and try some other business, we will never suc¬ 
ceed in this.” Thus saying, he put down his 
ax. But the woman was not so easily dis¬ 
heartened. “ Oh! cut away ! ” she said, “ we 
will conquer these trees by and by, and we will 
have a nice farm before long.” These words 
gave new strength to the man’s arm, he com¬ 
menced to work again. Now, in 1861, they have 
a beautiful farm of 200 acres. They are ‘ well 
off,’ as people say. At the county fair the wo¬ 
man received premiums for her fine apples and 
grapes. The daughter had good needlework 
there, and the father exhibited excellent horses 
and mules. He has a thousand bushels of corn 
in his crib. He reads the Agriculturist , and pro¬ 
cures good books for his wife and children to 
study. The husband often relates the story to 
a circle of friends, and says that he would not 
have had this farm and independent homestead, 
but for the perseverance and encouragement of 
his wife on that day.” 
Washes for Trees. 
Complaints are made, here and there, that cer¬ 
tain washes for the bark of trees do more harm 
than good. One, whose apple trees were mossy 
and hide bound, and infested with insects, used 
lime-wash; another used soap; another tar; 
another, a solution of potash; but in nearly every 
case, with unsatisfactory results. The caustic 
lime kills the parasitic plants and the vermin 
which infest the bark; but while a good part of 
it soon washes off, what remains becomes con¬ 
verted into carbonate of lime, which fills the 
pores of the inner bark, and prevents its healthy 
expansion and growth. Common soap suds is 
less hurtful than the solutions Of caustic potash 
or the tar.-The safest and best wash known 
to us, is simply a solution of common sal- 
soda, (often called bleacher’s No. 1 soda,) dis¬ 
solved in rain water, at the rate of one pound 
of soda to a gallon of water, and applied in 
Spring and Fall. It will not hurt the tree, but 
will destroy mosses and other fungi; and no 
eggs or cocoons of vermin can stand before it. 
It will work off the dead bark, and leave a clean 
and healthy surface. But to ensure the highest 
success from this application, the soil about the 
roots of the trees should be drained if it is wet, 
and be manured if it is barren. 
To Exterminate Pea-Bugs. 
“ What shall I do to rid my peas of bugs ?” 
exclaim both gardeners and farmers. And we 
will attempt a reply. The pea-weevil, a small, 
brown bug or fly, appears early in the Spring, 
at the time the first crops of peas are forming 
their pods. He stings the tender pod, right against 
the nascent pea, and deposits an egg. Sometimes 
he punctures every pea. A grub is soon hatch¬ 
ed, which eats his way into the heart of the pea. 
Here he grows apace, and by the time the pea 
is ripe he is full grown, about an eighth of an 
inch long. He is now a white grub, and has 
eaten out nearly one half of the pea. His next 
step is to pass into the pupa state, where he re¬ 
mains until the last of autumn, when he becomes 
a black beetle, and is prepared, on the opening 
of Spring, to attack young peas and to repro¬ 
duce his kind. This being the natural history of 
the insect, we may judge when and how to at¬ 
tack him. The black-bird, crow and oriole are 
his born enemies, but they do little towards 
exterminating him. Of the several methods em¬ 
ployed successfully, here is one : Make as many 
wooden boxes as you have varieties of seed, and 
fit them with tight covers. After gathering, 
sorting and drying the seeds, put three or four 
bits of camphor, the size of a pea, into each box, 
shake well together and put away. The bugs 
will be disgusted. Another way is, to scald the 
seed for about half a minute in boiling water, 
just before planting. This will, at least, destroy 
the grubs in the seed. If peas are buggy, we 
usually take our seed, a peck at a time, and just 
before sowing, pour in boiling water enough to 
cover them; then stir until cool, and sow. The 
scalding has never appeared to injure the germs, 
while it utterly destroys the bugs, and hastens 
the sprouting. If too large a mass of peas be 
taken together, or if rapid stirring be omitted, 
they might be injured by the heat. 
Another is this: Gather the peas as soon as 
ripe, dry them for two days in the sun. Then 
put, about a pint at a time, in a colander, cover 
with a pan, set them over a vessel of boiling 
water, keeping them there until the steam has 
penetrated the whole mass of seed. Then 
spread them out to dry, and put away in boxes 
or papers. This will kill the pupa, while it will 
not injure the germ of the seed. 
Peas sown as late as the middle of June, are 
seldom infested with the weevil, because its pe¬ 
riod for depositing eggs is then past. It is a 
common and good practice to sow peas for the 
next year’s seed very late in the season. 
Birds and Insects—Striking Figures 
Prof. Treadwell of Cambridge, in a recent 
communication to the Boston Natural History 
• Society, relates the following gastronomic feats 
of the Robin redbreast. “ By experiment it ap¬ 
pears, that though the bird’s food was increased 
on the 11th day to 40 worms, weighing 20 penny¬ 
weights (1 ounce), the weight fell off; and it was 
not until the fourteenth day, when he ate sixty 
eight worms, or 34 pennyweights, that he began 
to increase. On this day the weight of the bird 
was twenty four dwts.; he therefore ate forty 
one per cent more than his own weight, in 12 
hours. He weighed after it 29 pennyweights, or 
15 per cent less than the entire food he had eaten 
in 12 hours. The length of these worms, if laid 
end to end, would be about fourteen feet, or ten 
times the length of the intestines. To meet the 
objection that the earth worm contains but a 
small amount of solid nutriment, on the twenty 
seventh day he was fed exclusively on beef, 
in quantity 23 pennyweights; at night tho 
bird weighed 42 pennyweights, or but little more 
than twice the amount of food consumed dur¬ 
ing the day—not taking into account the earth 
and water swallowed. This presents a wonder¬ 
ful contrast with the amount of food required 
by the cold-blooded verterbrates—fishes and rep¬ 
tiles, many of which can live for months with¬ 
out food. It contrasts also with that required by 
mammalia. A man, eating at the same rate, 
would require about seventy pounds of flesh a 
day, and drink five or six gallons of water.” 
We think few were prepared to believe such 
facts in regard to the robin, whatever may have 
been their impressions of the usefulness of this 
bird. A pair of these birds in a garden, with 
the average of four young ones, would eat two 
hundred and fifty worms, or their equivalent in 
other insects, daily! Of canker worms and cat¬ 
erpillars when they first come out, this would 
amount to several thousands daily. It would 
not take a great many birds to keep a garden 
clean at this rate. We have heard of men who 
