AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
80 
La Salle and Jackson, and almost, all over 
the State. 
Now we come to a large number of speci¬ 
mens of prairie soil, that the chemist can 
touch with his wand, and the secret of their 
capacities will be disclosed. There, Avould 
spring in healthful luxuriance, the green 
spire, the early promise of the bearded 
grain ; thence might come in strength the 
corn, whose waving blades should salute the 
summer mornings, from border to border; 
such corn as that just there, from Morgan 
and Union Counties, that aspired to be num¬ 
bered among the trees, and proudly bore on 
almost every group of stalks, a score or 
more of ears 
Here are potatoes, smooth and fair as if 
they were natives of the sun-lit tree, and not 
of the dull, dark earth; pumpkins and 
squashes that one must walk around to com¬ 
prehend. And then, those ninety varieties 
of apples, contributed by Messrs. William 
Stewart and Son, of Quincy—a score of 
styles wherein Nature fashions and flavors 
the pear, from Thomas H. Payne, of Lake 
County; and apples, forty descriptions 
more, flushed with every tint of summer 
and the sun; from Sterling, from Canton 
and Stevenson ; from everywhere. There 
is a novelty in the shape of an Osage 
Orange ; then a basket of quinces from Will 
County. What clusters of grapes, blushing 
from the vineyerds of Hennepin—Catawbas 
and Isabellas. 
Verily, Nature in the west imposes no 
restraints upon the children she cherishes 
in her bosom. We think she must have 
somewhere repealed the law that limits the 
growth of fruit and shrub and tree. 
Those onions, “ round as my father’s 
shield,’’ and full as the moon in all her quar¬ 
ters—do you think weeping Wethersfield has 
anything to offer that can excel them 1 Some 
silly people suppose this earth of ours from 
small beginnings grew to its present magni¬ 
tude, layer by layer, and that the onion is a 
sort of minature model of the process. If 
patient Winter would sometime defer her 
coming for a while, the growth of Illinois 
onions might demonstrate the correctness of 
the theory. 
Surely Pomona and Ceres are the united 
divinities of this tent. 
There, too, are specimens of the ivoocls of 
Illinois—the material for sofa and plow, for 
mansion and coffin. And here are fossils, 
principally contributed by Dr. Condon, of 
Union County, and very curions things fos¬ 
sils are to be sure; a sort of legacy that 
some very old yesterday bequeathed unto 
to-day. There are lithographs of the old 
ferns, exquisitely done—the tracery as per¬ 
fect as the original it delineates. There, a 
coil of a serpent, that perhaps when its great 
ancestor was lurking in Eden, lay at length 
in a younger sun than shines upon us now. 
To think that a tree once full of life and 
music and motion, wherein the birds in 
Time’s early morning once sang; from 
whose foliage the sparkles of the dews of 
Creation were not yet brushed, to think of 
such a thing being exhumed to-day, indurated 
by ages, and in leaf and fiber, and massive 
trunk, made the peer of Time, and as if im¬ 
mortal in death. 
There are fossils though, that have never 
yet been under ground ; human fossils, long 
ago pulseless and cold ; the way to the heart 
stoned up ; the heart itself first cousin to 
Silex ; but one finds very few in the west, 
and we saw none in the Exhibition. 
Here, too, are shells in almost infinite va¬ 
riety ; some tinted after the fashion of a 
sunset sky ; some shaped like “ the fearful 
hollow ” of the human ear; some small 
models of the car of shell that he of the 
trident is said to ride forth in over his ocean 
kingdom ; and all suggestive of the times 
that were, when over these prairies, per¬ 
haps, and along those valleys, rolled the 
waters of some great Mediterranean of the 
new world—a mighty mirror dashed into 
atoms by the Maker’s hand, whereof these 
lakes of ours are only fragments. 
Here, too, are little blocks of Illinois mar¬ 
bles, beautiful enough for a Powers to model 
for, that are of far more interest to us than 
those gorgeous specimens of Australian 
gold ripened by barbaric suns among the 
quartz. 
And here we have the zoological collection 
of Mr. Robert Kennicott, representing the 
things that creep, and the things that fly, 
within the borders of the State. Mr. K. is a 
young man, though with a very old love for 
Nature, and may enjoy the consciousness, 
that in this labor of love he has “ done the 
State some service.” 
But leaving a thousand things unnoted, we 
turn away from this tent, so rich in the 
truest wealth—the wealth produced by an 
intelligent persuasion, as it were, of a most 
bountiful Nature—produced and not found, 
as children look for treasures, and “ children 
of a larger growth ” grope in sands and 
mountain streams, for gold; and we leave, 
bearing away with us, a deeper impression 
than ever, of the exhaustlees resources of 
our adopted State, that only await for their 
development, the wonderful touch of mind- 
directed hand. 
As we emerge again into the sun-bright 
air, a display of horses is being made in the 
circular arena, that the patriarch of Uz 
would have delighted to look upon, for Job, 
you remember, was a rare judge of the 
horse. Well, there were a few there, per¬ 
haps, of whom that great exemplar mortal 
patience might have said, “ the glory of his 
nostrils is terrible ; he paweth in the valley 
and rejoiceth in his strength; he saith 
among the trumpets, ‘ ha, ha!’ and he smell- 
eth the battle afar off—the thunder of the 
captains and the shouting.” Talk of modern 
pedigrees ! Here is one that is nobler than 
they all. 
* * * And what a graceful thing that 
swan-like “ cutter ” is! We love the old- 
fashioned name, and so we use it. What 
visions does it conjure up, as it stands there 
of a keen, clear moonlight, a twinkling air, 
and earth dumb under its great white coun¬ 
ter-pane. Then of a quilted hood, and a 
pair of bright eyes and a merry laugh and a 
musical voice in it, and of the sleigh-bells 
chime, ringing avvay over the hills and down 
the valley, and the moon climbing to night’s 
high noon, and you two and no more. The 
snow crackles beneath the gliding steel, but 
you are not cold ; the heart has too free a 
beat for frost. But snows have melted and 
moons have waned, and the old saying been 
made true again, “ one shall betaken and 
the other left,” and the wind has a sigh in it. 
By the by, if you feel the leastwise Quix¬ 
otic in the world, there’s a chance for a tilt, 
down there in the hollow. Do you see that 
Windmill, from the Halliday Company’s 
works 1 The wind used to go where it listed 
but such a device will keep the idle breezes 
busy that play about the old farm house in 
summer days, and the wild blasts of bugle¬ 
blowing March will have something to do 
now, besides swinging the vines beside the 
door, putting aside the curtains from the 
windows, rocking in the tree-tops, singing 
over the threshhold, and playing boatswain 
with the chimney. 
By this device, the whole family of Aeolus 
can be domesticated. This wind and that 
may churn, or spin, or rock the cradle, or 
saw the wood, or draw the water, and when 
the farmer looks out at his door, there they 
are, the busy winds at work. One, fresh 
find fragrant from a clover-field may be 
watering the cattle. Another that played 
in the garden among the roses, the night 
out, may be churning like a dairy-maid, 
and thus the farmer may have a new 
auxiliary, and free as air, to aid him every 
day. * * * 
WHAT DRAINING DID. 
A Short Chapter for Hired Men, and their Employers. 
Some years ago the son of an English 
farmer came to the United States, and let 
himself as a farm laborer, in New-York 
State, on the following conditions; com¬ 
mencing work at the first of September, he 
was to work ten hours a day for three years, 
and to receive in payment a deed of a field 
containing twelve acres—securing himself 
by an agreement, by which his employer 
was put under bonds of $2,000 to fulfill his 
part of the contract; also, during these three 
years, he was to have the control of the field; 
to work it at his own expense, and to give 
his employer one-half the proceeds. The 
field lay under the south side of a hill, was 
of dark heavy clay restingon a bluish-colored 
solid clay subsoil, and for many years pre¬ 
vious, had not been known to yield anything 
but a yellowish, hard, scrunted vegetation. 
The farmer thought the young man was a 
simpleton, and that he. himself, was most 
wise and fortunate ; but the former, nothing 
daunted by this opinion, which he was not 
unconscious that the latter entertained of 
him, immediately hired a set of laborers, 
and set them to work in the field trenching 
as earnestly as it was well possible for men 
to labot. In the morning and evening, be¬ 
fore and after having worked his ten hours as 
per agreement, he worked with them, and 
continued to work in this way until, about 
the middle of the following November, he 
had finished the laying of nearly 5,000 yards 
of good tile underdrains. He then had the 
