AMERICAN AGRSICULTiURISTs 
270 
For the American Agriculturist. 
THE NEW YEAR. 
The close of the old and the'commence¬ 
ment of the new year is always a seasona¬ 
ble time for reflection. Whether prosperity 
or adversity, success or failure, has attended 
our efforts, the appropriateness of a retro¬ 
spection of the past and calculation for the 
future, is alike the same. If our labor has 
been crowned with success, a repetition of 
the same care and instrumentalities will 
bring about similar future results; but if 
failure has attended our efforts, if the sources 
of failure are properly appreciated and 
guarded against, they may be in a measure 
avoided in the future. 
The past year has been prolific of disas¬ 
trous results, of vexations and disappoint¬ 
ments. Disasters on sea and land, casual¬ 
ties by fire and flood, have proven destruc¬ 
tive to property and life. War, with all its 
attendant evils, has ranged abroad; and 
drouth and pestilence, to some extent, have 
blighted hopes at home. Many, whom the 
last opening year saw in affluence, have gone 
down into the vale of poverty ; some, Avliose 
coffers were filled with gold, have become 
bankrupt, either from necessity or dishon¬ 
esty ; financial affairs have been in an un¬ 
settled condition, and, in many parts of the 
country, paper currency, in real value, has 
been subject to no small degree of vacilla¬ 
tion and change. 
These conditions have affected all classes 
in community, but indeed very unequally. 
The intelligent agriculturist, though the 
drouth may have scorched his fields and les¬ 
sened his harvests, has produced enough for 
his own necessities, and a small surplus to 
supply his non-producing neighbor, at an ex¬ 
orbitant price. Under these circamstances, 
wars abroad and casualties at home, com¬ 
mercial embarrassments and monetary in¬ 
trigues, affect him comparatively little. The 
cold winds of the present winter may pile 
the snow around his door never so high, yet 
he has fire, and food, and clothing, within, 
and he can quietly gather wisdom and ma¬ 
ture his plans for the future, and be ready to 
commence their successful operation at the 
opening spring. Not so with the mechanic 
or day laborer. For years the demand for 
labor has, perhaps, not been as small as at 
present; and in our larger cities, many are 
idle almost from necessity, and suffering 
want or subjects of charity. 
In consequence of the past unproductive 
season, many farmers are proposing to aban¬ 
don what they consider an uncertain and un- 
remunerative calling. Without pretending 
to any skill in prophecy, we predict that 
many will regret the change. With intelli¬ 
gence, and skill, and energy, properly di¬ 
rected, farming may become the most regu¬ 
larly and certainly remunerative of any vo¬ 
cation or profession. Banks may suspend 
payment; creditors may become defaulters; 
commerce and trade may suffer an unforseen 
depression; but all deposits wisely made 
with Mother Earth will pay, if not an equal, 
at least a regular and remunerative, div¬ 
idend. 
To all engaged in agricultural pursuits it 
may not be amiss to say, that repinings are 
useless. The present winter can not be 
better spent than in gathering such intelli¬ 
gence as may be needed in the future, and in 
laying such plans as the experience of the 
past may show to be wise to adopt in the 
approaching seed-time and harvest. Those 
who labor without a plan and cultivate with¬ 
out intelligence, should by no means com¬ 
plain of ill-success, or charge to Providence 
the unproductive season. 
To those who are tired of farming, or who 
complain of drouths or unproductive seasons, 
we would say—plow deep, plant early, ma¬ 
nure liberally, sow wisely, cultivate fre¬ 
quently and thoroughly, and last, but by no 
means least, subscribe for one or more first- 
class agricultural papers, read them atten¬ 
tively and put in practice the knowledge de¬ 
rived therefrom, and unfruitful seasons will 
be less frequent, and drouths less destruc¬ 
tive. Ignorance and carelessness are the 
mothers of many a scanty harvest, and Prov¬ 
idence and unpropitious seasons are often 
complained of, when a reasonable amount of 
intelligence and well-directed industry would 
have secured ample harvests and remunera¬ 
tive returns. O. C. Gibbs, M. I)., 
Perry, Lake Co., Ohio. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
EXTRAVAGANCE IN TRAVELING. 
Messrs. Editors : I read with real satis¬ 
faction your remarks on “ Modern Extrava¬ 
gance,” and was much impressed with their 
truth and force. But there is one mode of 
wasting time and money in our day, to which 
you do not allude, although you speak of 
rushing by the dwellings Of friends on rail¬ 
ways. I refer to the habit of traveling , into 
which “ everybody and his wife ” seem to 
have fallen in this era of rapid locomotion. 
As the nature of my peculiar occupation is 
such as to require me to pass frequently 
from place to place—though I had much 
rather stay at. home if 1 could—I am favored 
with constant opportunities of observing the 
way in which numbers of people, of both 
sexes, incessantly itinerate. This is pecu¬ 
liarly the case on all roads leading to Bos¬ 
ton and New-York. For instance, if a wo¬ 
man in any of the towns or villages within a 
hundred miles of those cities wishes to do a 
little “ shopping,” it is her practice of econ¬ 
omy to go to Washington-street or Broad¬ 
way. That is, she will spend four dollars 
in fares, and as much more in other inci¬ 
dental expenses, for the sake of buying some 
ten or twenty dollars’ worth of goods cheap, 
and to have a choice among a variety, when 
she could have saved all her expenses and 
got better articles at home for less money; 
although then she wouldn’t have had the fun 
and seen the sights. 
It always seems to me, when I travel, as 
if nine-tenths, at least, of the men and wo¬ 
men, who seem to cram the cars for the sole 
sake of patronizing railroad companies, 
would be far better off if they stayed at 
home and economized their time and money. 
However much rapid modes of locomotion 
may have added to the substantial wealth of 
the whole country, it may be doubted wheth¬ 
er they have not diminished the means of 
individuals. P. 
Valuable Barn Destroyed. —The new 
barn belonging to Anthony Reybold, in Red 
Lion Hundred, Delaware, was entirely de¬ 
stroyed by fire on Monday afternoon. The 
Republican says, it was one of the finest 
buildings of the kind in the State, and con¬ 
tained about 200 bushels of wheat, 1,600 
bushels of corn, over 1,000 bushels of pota¬ 
toes, and from 70 to 100 tons of hay, all of 
which were totally destroyed. Two valua¬ 
ble horses were also consumed, a new 
threshing machine, all his farming imple¬ 
ments, gears, &c. The loss is not short, of 
$10,000 or $12,000. The barn was insured 
in the Delaware Mutual Company for $2,000, 
and the contents for $3,000. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
DETAILS OF PRACTICE- 
OLD ORCHARDS -MUCK- LIME- ASHES-AND 
SUNDRY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 
I have an old Apple Orchard which has 
borne no good fruit for a number of years, 
as I learn from the neighbors who have long 
known it; and who also say that it has been 
laid down to grass .'not less than twelve or 
sixteen years, and has been much neglected 
during that time, bearing only a very light 
crop of fine, inferior hay. I took possession 
last spring. It had been plowed up once, 
the fall previous, after a crop of buckwheat 
was taken off. 
Last spring I put about'fifty loads of good 
barn-yard manure on about an acre of the 
field where there are no trees, and subsoiled, 
and planted corn on the 7th day of .Tune, and 
on that part had as fine a piece of corn as 
was raised in this region, beside fourteen 
horse cart-loads of cheese pumpkins and bell 
squashes. Thanks to the instructions of the 
American Agriculturist for so much good 
luck. On the rest of the field, among the 
trees, which are so thinly standing as to 
shade the ground lightly, especially as the 
foliage was sparse and sickly, 1 also planted 
corn and pumpkins, but had but. a very light 
crop of the former, and none at all of the lat¬ 
ter. I have, the last summer, been carting 
rotten leaf mould from the woods, and muck 
from the ditches, into the barn-yard, mixing 
ing it with the manure-heap, and am making 
a large quantity to manure highly the rest of 
the field — at least fifty loads to the acre— 
and intend plowing deeply and subsoiling, 
and cultivating thoroughly with such crops 
as will keep tlie ground frequently stirred 
and mellow. 
Around the apple trees I have already 
strewn fully a bushel of air-slaked lime to 
each, spreading it from the trunk as far out 
as the branches reach, and now contemplate 
getting the leached barilla, &c., from the 
soap-boilers, and strew that around in the 
same manner this winter, and let the freez¬ 
ing and thawing rains and snows carry it 
down into the earth, getting it thoroughly in¬ 
corporated with the soil ; and thenj in the 
general manuring of the field in the spring, 
make sure that the trees have a good sup¬ 
ply, plowing it all in deep, making the ground 
mellow and light entirely around the trees, 
even at the expense of cutting some of the 
roots with the plow, believing that the dis¬ 
turbance of a few of the roots will be a very 
much less evil than leaving the ground hard 
and compact even six, eight, or ten inches 
deep. 
Am I right in this treatment ? Is not the 
application of the lime and leached ashes 
supplying a probable want of the trees, as 
they form so important a constituent thereof? 
And is the winter a proper time to apply 
them ? Will they lose any of their proper¬ 
ties by so applying them 1 (a) 
I have already scraped them, from the 
collar to the farthest part, of the limbs con¬ 
veniently reached with a hoe or tree-scraper, 
and intend in the spring to wash them with 
diluted soft soap, or washing soda, and where 
they need it prune the top. My neighbors 
tell me I have very little chance for a crop of 
fruit, “because the trees have not borne any 
for a long time, and have become old and 
exhausted.” ( b) But when I ask them if they 
have been supplied with their appropriate 
food to enable them to bear, they say “ the 
ground has not, been exhausted with crops, 
but. left to grass that the trees might have 
the whole strength of the soil.” But I con¬ 
tend that they need cvltivation, and feeding, 
as much as a hill of corn or potatoes, and 
that it is just about as unreasonable to ex¬ 
pect them to yield me good fruit without 
sivch feeding and attention, as it would be for 
