AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
FOR THE 
Hai-in, Garden, and Household. 
“AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AMI* MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.” —Washington.' 
©RAIGE JUDD, A.M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
Office, 41 Part Row, (Times Buildings.) 
VOLUME XXI—No. 8. 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842. 
Pmljlislicil boils in English and German. 
NEW-YORK, AUGUST, 1863. 
$1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBER, 10 CENTS. 
For Contents, Terms, etc., see page 250. 
NEW SERIES—No. 187. 
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1862, hy 
Okange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of 
the United States for the Southern District of New-York. 
Other Journals are invited to copy desirable articles 
freely, (/each article he credited to American Agriculturist. 
“ Thrice happy, he who on the sunless side 
Of a romantic mountain, forest-ciowned, 
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines; 
Or in the gelid caverns, woodbine wrought, 
And fresh bedewed with ever-spouting streams, 
Sits coolly cairn, while all the world without, 
Unsatisfied and sick, tosses in noon 
Emblem instructive of the virtuous man, 
Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure, 
And every passion aptly harmonized, 
Amid a jarring world with vice inflamed.” — Thomson. 
These forest-crowned hill-tops and mountains, 
where it is really cool in these glowing Summer 
days, are more easily found in the poet’s imagi¬ 
nation, than in nature. The air is so.sweltering 
that we find it difficult to believe that they exist 
at all. Clothing is a burden, even the fine linen 
of snowy whiteness reflecting every ray of the 
sun. The ah has a furnace breath, and makes 
every living thing swelter. Even the inanimate 
world cries out under the infliction. The trees 
stand with drooping leaves in the breathless ah, 
the grass loses its fresh green look, the flowers 
hang theh heads or close their petals, big drops 
stand on the water pitcher as if uttering its tear¬ 
ful protest against the torrid heat. The very 
thought of ice sends a thrill through the blood 
like the rapture of song. We do not doubt that 
there are cool places in the world, but they are 
not very easily reached. In the City every thing 
is baked. Put your hand upon the brick wall, 
and you can hardly endure the touch. There is 
hardly a dry thread in your shirt, hy the time 
you are fairly seated in your office. The easiest 
manual labor is a burden. Mental effort is the 
very punishment of Sisyphus. Every thought is 
heavy as a bowlder, and if you attempt to roll it 
into place, it comes back again with a rebound. 
You find yourself doubting if your brains are 
not baked, like every thing around you. 
In the country it is not quite so had, for there 
is sometimes a breeze there, and dew gathers 
on the grass at night fall. But in the broad glare 
of the sun, every thing wilts, and all creatures 
flee to the shade. Yet this bright sunshine so 
characteristic of our Summers, and so uncom¬ 
fortable while it lasts, has its advantages. We 
would not willingly exchange it for the milder 
skies of Britain, with her greener fields, and 
boundless turnip crops. Our sunshine is as 
golden to the farmer as to the poet’s vision. To 
him it is a real Midas, changing every thing it 
touches into gold. These few weeks of extreme 
heat give us many of the advantages of the trop¬ 
ics, without their evils. Our great cereal crop is 
of southern origin, and is- only made a success 
by the torrid heats of July aud August. It lux¬ 
uriates in the sunshine, when the thermometer 
points to a hundred, and bears drouth better than 
auy other of our crops. It is often a failure iu 
the northern belt, where it is cultivated, from 
the want of a single week of hot weather. It 
may droop at midday, but it grows apace at 
night, when heat drives sleep from the farmer’s 
pillow. These fierce burning days, then, mean 
great crops of Indian corn. The bright rays are 
transmuted into the golden grain, and when sold 
become the real gold in the farmer’s purse, Our 
country is the Paradise of this plant, and one 
can hardly comprehend the magnitude of the 
corn crop. It is easy to write a thousand mil¬ 
lions of bushels, hut difficult to take in the con¬ 
ception of so vast a bulk. It is nearly a bushel 
for every inhabitant of the globe, and thirty bush¬ 
els to every one of our own population. What 
' countless stores of food for man and beast are 
showered upon us in the sunlight ! The crop 
this year, well sold, would pay the year’s ex¬ 
penses for our great war. 
These hot days also mean melons, one of 
Nature’s bountiful provisions to slake the thirst 
of parched lips, and cool the fevered blood. We 
see them luxuriating in the sands of Long Island 
and the Jerseys, and even far up the valleys of 
the Connecticut and the Hudson, as juicy and 
high flavored as in the Carolinas. In some lo¬ 
calities they require a little help from the gar¬ 
dener’s art, hut in this latitude they are as sure 
as Indian com. They are grown very exten¬ 
sively, and could be produced in any quantity 
were there a market for them. We see them in 
huge piles on the boats and wharves, and at the 
green-grocer’s. They are sent far inland to the 
cities and rural villages, ivlierever the sales will 
pay. They form a much more healthful des¬ 
sert than pies and are quite as well relished. 
In these tropical days tomatoes are a possibil¬ 
ity. They have become a popular dish within 
the last twenty years, and are now almost as 
widely known as the cucumber. They propa¬ 
gate themselves even more readily, and flourish 
as a weed where they have once been intro¬ 
duced, if they are not carefully gathered in the 
fall. Though not generally relished at first, most 
people become very fond of them after a short 
acquaintance, so that they even supplant the 
cucumber. They are a much more healthful and 
nutritious dish, and what the doctors lose the 
people will gain, when it entirely displaces its 
. rival. Though not so great an acquisition as 
its congener, the potato, it came much more rap¬ 
idly into general use, and is an article of consid¬ 
erable commercial importance. There is always 
a large demand for tomatoes in their season, 
which covers about two months, but which may 
be almost indefinitely extended by putting up 
tbe fruit in cans aud jars. 
A large part of the favorites of our gardens— 
corn and tomatoes, squashes and melons, egg 
plant and okra, peppers and sweet potatoes—are 
natives of the tropics. They have been intro¬ 
duced among us without any concerted action, 
and stand upon their own merits. Some of 
them require a little more skill and care in their 
cultivation than indigenous plants, but they are 
likely to grow in popular esteem as horticulture 
becomes every year more generally appreciated. 
We have no reason to believe that these plants 
exhaust the list of garden vegetables from the 
south that may be acclimated in the north. The 
happy accidents that have brought these to our 
notice will gradually introduce others. Every 
such acquisition is an addition to the comfort of 
families, and to the national wealth. Health 
and refinement are both promoted hy the Variety 
of food which the family consumes. 
Barou Liebig measures the civilization of 
a people by the quantity of soap they consume. 
A still better test is the variety of fruits and veg¬ 
etables they produce in their gardens. The 
tropical man with his everlasting rice and plan¬ 
tains, and the Esquimaux with their seal and 
blubber, are rather low types of humanity. Be¬ 
tween these extremes we find a greater variety 
of food and a higher degree of civilization. But 
this is not purely a matter of climate. Upon 
the same line of latitude in our country, we find 
very different tables spread for human repasts, 
even among farmers. In one home you may 
find almost every thing that will grow in the 
climate, taking its turn upon the table in its sea¬ 
son. The strawberries come in May and the ap¬ 
ples go out with April of the following year, a 
constant succession of good things, that make 
the meal hours pleasant reunions of the whole 
family. In another you shall find the everlast¬ 
ing hog and hominy in some of its forms every 
day of the year, or potatoes and salt junk the 
prominent features at dinner for six days in the 
week. The vegetable garden is regarded as a 
nuisance and the fruit yard and orchard are un¬ 
known. “Familiarity breeds contempt” with, 
things, if not with persons, and the same dish 
at dinner, after a while makes a family morose, 
and unsocial. A new dish is a nest of new ideas. 
A smile lights every countenance and the tongue 
is unloosed. We forget dog-days in gumbo soup 
and cliicken salad, and other such-like things. 
And no idea is more erroneous, than, that it is 
wrong to seek after enjoyment in eating.- We 
ought to .enjoy our food, and if we cultivate sim¬ 
ple tastes, tlie greater variety we have, the better. 
