122 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
his get will probably make good working 
oxen. 
By the way, I forgot to mention, in my 
account of Dr. Watts’s stock, his roan twin 
oxen, five years old, thoroughbred, and good 
workers. The Doctor thinks them equal to 
any yoke in the country for work. Better 
cattle in points can hardly be found. The 
demand for breeders is so great now-a-days, 
that the thoroughbred bulls are too valuable 
to be castrated. When the time comes that 
we can afford to make steers of all save the 
very best, what cattle we shall see ! for good 
breeding shows as strongly in oxen as in 
cows or bulls. 
At the west family, I saw the imported 
bull Duke of Southwick, and a fine lot of 
cows, many of which show deep milking. 
1 learned no names or particulars, as the 
herdsman was absent. All of their lands 
are in a fine state, well cultivated, good high 
fences, good dwelling-houses, and barns both 
for gram and cattle. In some rich neigh¬ 
borhoods in this State, stables, either for 
horses or cows, are not fashionable, save a 
kind made of heavy rails or poles, without 
any roof. A stranger might, perhaps, call 
them ten-acre fields—and nothing else. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
THE PRACTICAL EDUCATIONN OF BOYS. 
All teachers know that boys, brought up 
in cities and large villages, are much more 
difficult to control, more artful, idle and vi¬ 
cious than those whose home is in the coun¬ 
try. It has ever been admitted, that an agri¬ 
cultural community, caeteris paribus, (other 
things being equal,) will have a higher stand¬ 
ard of morals than those w r ho live in the 
densely populated city or in large manufac¬ 
turing towns. The reason of this is obvi¬ 
ous. Where there is a sparse population, 
devoted to daily toil, there is neither time 
nor occasion to learn or practice the ways 
of the world. Men seldom meet in the 
country, and do not, therefore, learn to ape 
the vices of the rich or the frauds of the un¬ 
principled. Boys, in a city, at the age of ten 
years, know more of the world, more of its 
worst aspects, than young men in the coun¬ 
try at their majority. The chief reason of 
this precocity of mischief in the spruce lads 
of the town is, that they have so little to do. 
Labor is the ordination of heaven. Nei¬ 
ther an idle man nor an idle boy can retain 
his integrity. Indolence and virtue have no 
affinity for each other. The superabundant 
energy of the city boy is expended in tricks, 
in fun, frolic, and play. lie soon learns 
his trade and loves it. Books can not draw 
him from his games and idle amusements. 
The same impulses, in the farmer’s boy, are 
directed to some useful end. His warm 
blood and high passions are subdued by la¬ 
bor. He has little time for mischief. School 
is to him a relief, a recreation ; to the city 
boy it is a confinement, an irksome l'estraint 
upon his pleasures. He goes to school, be¬ 
cause he must; he leaves it when he can. 
I have often known a young man, from the 
plow or shop, to enter an academy to fit for 
college ; and in one year, overtake or excel 
the village boys who had been wasting their 
time for years upon the same studies. I 
have often had more annoyance from a single 
city boy than from forty farmers’ sons in the 
same institution. All teachers are familiar 
with these facts. A common school, in a 
large village, is usually far more difficult to 
be governed than schools in the rural districts 
with the same number of pupils. Such a 
state of things need not exist, if parents 
would find employment for their children 
when out of school. 
In many villages, fathers, who can ill af¬ 
ford the expense, hire men to bring in wood, 
build fires, and harness a horse, while their 
own sons are with the crowd upon the play 
ground, learning, besides the game, the pro¬ 
fane and vulgar dialect of every rowdy in 
town. Why should not the beloved son, 
who is preparing for college, be required to 
strengthen his muscles and acquire physical 
strength by the use of the spade and hoe in 
the garden, as well as to soil and tear his 
clothes, and become rude and vicious in the 
crowd? If a gentleman keeps a horse, why 
should not his son learn to harness him, and, 
if necessary,groomhim? “But,’’says the fond 
mother, “his clothes will smell of the barn.” 
Better so than have his soul tainted with 
vice. But let him have shoes and dress, 
fitted for his work, which maybe exchanged 
for others when his work is done. I have 
seen a young gentleman, already in college, 
attempt to harness a horse when no old gen¬ 
tleman was at hand to aid him ; and he 
buckled both the hold-back straps around the 
thills of the chaise, instead of putting them 
into their proper place. Thus the lives of 
the parties, taking the airing, were perilled. 
Many fathers, in country villages, build 
costly houses with no barn or out house. 
They keep neither horse, nor cow, nor hen. 
They have active and sprightly boys who, 
like the lilies, “ toil not,” but grow both in 
years and in vice. They exercise daily with 
the multitude ; and, they soon become more 
shrewd than their sires. How much better 
would it be for the whole country, if every 
young man wrnre required to perform some 
useful service every day. No boy ought to 
be too good or too knowing to work. Labor 
promotes the moral health of his soul. The 
Jews were wise in requiring every young 
man to be master of some trade. It would 
be well for us if every boy were required to 
learn some handicraft which would, if ne¬ 
cessary, afford a livelihood. E. D. S. 
A BIG HORSE. 
W e saw a curiosity yesterday in the shape 
of a horse, passing through here on its way 
to Louisville, Ky., in charge of the Ameri¬ 
can Express Co. He was a fine, powerful 
specimen of the Norman draught-horse, up¬ 
wards of seventeen hands high—broad- 
backed, deep-chested, and strong-limbed— 
and looked as if he was capable of doing the 
work of four ordinary horses with ease. He 
is valued at three thousand dollars, and 
comes of a breed unequaled for strength 
and power of endurance. He was imported 
by a gentleman in Louisville, expressly 
with a view to the crossing of his Norman 
blood with that of the faster but less power¬ 
ful breed of racers now so common in the 
southwest, by which means he hopes to 
combine the two qualities of strength and 
speed in an eminent degree. The express 
agent here informs us that the order for 
the purchase was sent out to France by ex¬ 
press, the European agents attending to the 
buying and shipping for New-York, where 
he was taken charge of by the American 
Express Co., who will convey him to Lou¬ 
isville. An instance like this affords a strik¬ 
ing example of the facilities furnished by 
the Express companies for the transaction 
of business at a distance. Here is a valua¬ 
ble horse purchased in Normandy, and trans¬ 
ported a distance of not far from five thou¬ 
sand miles, by ship, steamboat and railroad, 
and delivered to his owner in Kentucky, 
without the least risk or trouble to the latter, 
the whole responsibility being assumed by 
the company. The expense of transporta¬ 
tion alone, by any other mode, would exceed 
the original cost, while at the same time the 
owner would run great risk of losing him 
through the inattention or mismanagement of 
those to whose care he was committed. We 
can only wonder how we used to get along 
a few years ago, before expresses were es¬ 
tablished .—Schenectady Star. 
If the person who has imported the above 
horse will breed him to the large common 
mares of the country, he will produce a val¬ 
uable race of draught horses. But if he 
crosses him on to racing blood, as suggested 
above, he will have as miserable and worth¬ 
less a progeny as can be well conceived. 
Such a cross is too violent; and instead of 
combining the two qualities of strength and 
speed in their offspring, he will only get 
what is most worthless in both parents. If 
the writer of the above paragraph were not 
utterly ignorant of the principles of breed¬ 
ing, he would not suggest such an absurdity. 
The sixty-fourth part of Norman blood in the 
veins of a racer would ruin his speed and 
endurance, and rather detract than add to 
his strength. When one knows nothing of 
a subject he should be more careful in 
writing about it. 
Panama Railroad.— The correspondent of 
the New-York Times, who attended the 
opening of the Panama Railroad, gives the 
following description of the obstacles its 
builders had to contend against : 
“ This fifty miles of railway crosses more 
than one hundred and thirty bridges from 
six feet in length to six hundred, and where- 
ever there is possibility of aswellable stream, 
there is a culvert; and all those bridges are, 
or are to be, of iron. It was cut through 
swamps, full of the tangled roots of water 
lilies, wild plantains, bamboos, covered with 
four inch thorns, six inches in diameter, and 
thirty, forty, fifty feet in height; through 
cedar trees, each trunk of which makes a 
canoe to hold from two to thirty people, 
through all sorts of palm, cocoanuts, milk, 
oil-nut, thatching palm, cabbage palm, pala- 
ma real, the kingly. Through twisted man¬ 
grove clusters ; through groves of poisonous 
manzanilla, to sleep beneath which is death; 
the smoke of its burning wood destroying the 
eye-sight. Through more than five thou¬ 
sand varieties of noticeable plants, the pa¬ 
tient engineer cut his way, knowing as he 
knows to-day, that if the track were left 
unwatched one year, it would be utterly 
covered up and hidden by vegetation twenty, 
thirty feet in height.” 
“ Timothy, what are you doing there with 
your feet dangling in the water ?” 
“ Trying to catch cold, ma, so that I can 
have some of those cough lozenges, you 
gave me yesterday. 
