318 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
We think the time has come when the 
club will be appreciated among farmers, and 
when the leading men in every neighbor¬ 
hood should seek to establish a stated meet¬ 
ing for mutual improvement in the cultiva¬ 
tion of the soil. There is now not only a 
great deal of information to be gathered 
from the agricultural press, that would be 
available in such meetings, but every such 
neighborhood would glean from the field of 
its own operations, new facts, that would be 
of service to the science of husbandry. No 
intelligent tiller of the soil, who observes 
closely the phenomena of animal and vege¬ 
table growth, can fail to find many things in 
his own practice, from year to year, that 
will be of great advantage to his fellow cul¬ 
tivators. 
Farmers clubs are an important means of 
self-culture. The weekly or monthly dis¬ 
cussion would draw out of every member 
the narrative of his own experience in hus¬ 
bandry. It would tend to form the habit of 
ready public speaking, which is of great ser¬ 
vice to every citizen, and a talent too little 
cultivated among farmers. They have rare¬ 
ly attempted it, and are scared at the sound 
of their own voices, even in a meeting in 
the district school-house. But crops and 
stock are matters on which they are so well 
posted, that they could have no lack of ma¬ 
terial, or of interest, and out of the abun¬ 
dance of the heart the mouth would speak. 
This habit once formed, would soon show 
itself in other pursuits, and if it became 
general, it would greatly increase the influ¬ 
ence of farmers as a class in the community. 
It is important that they should learn to talk 
as fluently, and as much to the point, as any 
other class of men. 
The club, too, would have a very happy 
social influence, especially if the meet¬ 
ing should be held at the several houses of 
the members in regular succession, and if 
the wives and daughters should form a part 
of the company. This element mingles too 
little in farm life. They often live remote 
from neighbors, are pressed with business, 
and find it difficult to make a call with no 
special object in view. In the club, busi¬ 
ness and social pleasure could be united, 
and its influence would soon be seen in 
healing old feuds, and in brightening old 
friendships. 
The meetings would add much to the 
stock of information among the members. 
We rarely spend ten minutes in conversa¬ 
tion with a farmer, or visit a garden, where 
we do not learn something that proves of 
service to us in our own cultivation. The 
experience of every tiller of the soil is use¬ 
ful to his neighbor just as he becomes ac¬ 
quainted with it. There are a great variety 
of pursuits among cultivators. Some make 
a specialty of stock-raising, others of fruit¬ 
growing, and others still follow a varied 
course of agriculture. Some give them¬ 
selves wholly to farming, while others fol¬ 
low a profession or mechanical art, and sim¬ 
ply till a garden. The club would bring all 
these classes together, and elicit the infor¬ 
mation which each possessed for the com¬ 
mon benefit of the whole. Each has ob¬ 
served something which his neighbor has 
overlooked, or has never had the opportunity 
of observing. The pastor has found a new 
remedy for the pear slug, and the lawyer 
has outwitted the curculio and trapped him 
at last. The stock-grower has treated the 
horn-ail and the horse distemper success¬ 
fully, and the dairyman tells us the secret 
of the fine cheese which always brings an 
extra price. It would be impossible for such 
a company to meet together for the winter, 
without mutual improvement. 
Besides this, the club, if followed up, 
would beget a habit of careful observation, 
which is very much wanted upon the farm, 
as in all other callings. The man accus¬ 
tomed to hear the results of the observa¬ 
tion of others, and to profit by it, would 
not fail to open his own eyes, and watch the 
the signs of the times in his fields and 
among his stock. The fact that we have 
occasion to use knowledge, leads to its acquisi¬ 
tion. There many unsettled questions in 
husbandry, that would soon be investigated 
in the field, if there was a community of 
interest in the undertaking. Twenty or 
thirty farmers associated for a common ob¬ 
ject, would accomplish much more in the 
study of the science of their calling, than 
the same number of minds working alone. 
In every respect, we think, such clubs 
would have a most happy influence upon all 
the members, and upon the farming interest. 
The time has already come to begin them, 
and a smart, enterprising farmer, cannot do 
a better work than to start a club in his own 
district. If you can find a half dozen to 
organize with, it is enough. If you cannot 
find any better place of meeting, take the 
school-house, which serves almost every 
good purpose in the country. It may as 
well be a school for the fathers, as for the 
children. Never mind anything about the 
constitution or by-laws. The less formal 
the meeting can be made the better. A few 
rules are well enough, but are not at all es¬ 
sential. If you can arrange to take a large 
number of papers devoted to rural affairs, 
and exchange them among the members, it 
will be well enough. But the main thing is 
the regular meeting for the discussion of 
some topic, designated before hand, so that 
all can gather their thoughts, and be prepared 
for the discussion. Reader, will you not try 
to start a club in your neighborhood! —Ed. 
WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE MICE? 
The amount of injury done to fruit trees 
by mice during last winter is almost incredi¬ 
ble. All through the summer, report after 
report has reached us of large flourishing 
orchards almost entirely destroyed by these 
wily depredators. There has been little 
noise and excitement on this subject, owing 
to the circumstance that the extent of the 
mischief has been but gradually developed. 
Even where the barking of the trees was 
above ground so as to be readily seen, most 
orchardists hoped to save many of their 
trees by applying various substances, and 
they have been loth to come to the conclu¬ 
sion that their favorite fruit trees, so long 
nursed with assiduous care, were really de¬ 
stroyed beyond recovery. But the progress 
of the Summer has proved that the fatal 
teeth of the depredators penetrated deeper 
than usual towards the life wood of the tree. 
But the injury last Winter was, in very 
many cases, different from anything expe¬ 
rienced in former years. Thousands of 
trees were gnawed below the surface of the 
ground, while heretofore the bark has only 
been eaten off above ground. Last week 
we called upon a friend who is noted as a 
fruit grower. For a dozen years or more he 
has been preparing large orchards, stocking 
them with the best kinds of fruits. One 
year ago he had over one hundred and thirty 
acres of choice trees, most of them just at 
the right age to yield remunerative crops, 
and he had looked for the product as a source 
of income for the rest of his life, now some¬ 
what advanced. Last Winter the mice 
ruined nearly the whole of this finest 
single collection of trees in the country. 
The loss, not only to the proprietor himself 
but to the community, is irreparable. At 
least fifteen years would be required to rear 
other orchards to the same condition, and 
this will not now be attempted—or not until 
some sure safeguard against another like 
destruction shall be discovered. 
We have given an outline of one case, to 
us the more striking as it came under our 
own immediate observation. But there are 
thousands of other cases, individually less 
in importance than the above, but in the ag¬ 
gregate of very serious moment. We learn 
that the mice are now in the fields in great 
numbers, and that there is a prospect of ex¬ 
tended ravages the coming Winter. The 
question now is, 
What shall be done with the mice ? 
We have had remedies proposed by the 
dozen, but none of them will be effectual, be¬ 
cause they refer only to the protection of 
the tree above ground, whereas much injury 
was done last Winter both to the main stock 
below the surface, and to the roots. We were 
recently asked to examine a couple of sick¬ 
ly looking trees to ascertain what was the 
matter with them. Observing mice holes 
at a little distance from the trunk, we dug 
away the earth around the roots, and found 
the tap root gnawed half away and entirely 
dead, while most of the side roots were also 
dead from the same cause. We doubt not 
that a large number of similar cases will be 
found elsewhere. Now tar, salt, lime, ash¬ 
es, turpentine, assafcetida, &c., upon the 
trunk, removing the snow as fast as it falls, 
or packing it down solid, will none of them 
answer in such cases? Can any of our 
readers suggest anything that will? We 
solicit replies to this question at an early 
day, that, should any feasible plan be sug¬ 
gested, we may publish it in our next in 
time to be available the present season. 
Why were the mice so destructive last Win¬ 
ter ? 
This has been accounted for by the fact 
that there was an unusually large body of 
snow around the trees during several 
months. But this will not account for the 
abundance of mice, as these animals cannot 
nest and breed in a snow-bank. So far as 
we can learn, in those localities where the 
