148 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
of those who have to eat this vegetable; and 
to that ordeal we have great satisfaction in com¬ 
mitting them.— Gardener's Chronicle. 
WILL FARMING. PAY. 1 
% - 
We find in the Amherst Express a dinner 
speech by Mr. Ciias. L. Flint, Secretary of the 
Mass. Board of Agriculture, which seems to 
come to the point on this question. He took 
occasion to say: 
I have often heard it said that farming does 
not pay, that it pays less than any other pur¬ 
suit. Now I believe that it is this very idea, 
unqualified, naked as it is, that makes farming 
languish, and that causes so many of the young 
and intelligent men of the country to leave it; 
and I have sometimes had an inexpressible de¬ 
sire to say a word or two, not in denial, but 
rather in qualification of this statement, so pre¬ 
valent even among farmers themselves. 
Why, sir, if farming does not pay, where, in 
the name of common sense, let me ask, have 
the farmers here to-day procured so many of 
the evidences of comfort and happiness by 
which they are surrounded? Have they run in 
debt for them? Are their farms all covered 
with mortgages ? Have they not the means of 
meeting from day to day and from year to year 
all the wants of an easy and honorable liveli¬ 
hood ? 
No, sir, I venture to say their farms are no 
more covered with mortgages than they are 
with weeds and bushes. Here and there, it is 
true, is an instance of a firmer, deeply in 
volved, owing to circumstances or misfortunes 
which no human foresight could have prevented; 
but in what business of life is this not the case ? 
The boy who visits the metropolis and gazes at 
gorgeous and splendid palaces which line the 
streets, the beautiful carriages rolling in luxury, 
and all the magnificent decorations of wealth, is 
apt to stand amazed, some say gaping with as¬ 
tonishment. Fancy flings around it a bewitchin^ 
drapery, and he cannot see how such things can 
be without the solid, substantial foundation of 
wealth at the bottom of it all. He cannot see 
how the artificial forms of society require the 
display of wealth, without the needful wealth 
itself. He cannot go into the counting-room 
and sec the weight of embarrassment pressing 
down upon many an aching heart. He cannot 
see and know the number of those who wear a 
borrowed crown. 
Now, sir, I ask every farmer here if the farms 
in his neighborhood are not less mortgagee! 
than they were twenty years ago ? If the 
comforts and the luxuries of life are not 
more abundant, if the buildings are not, on 
the whole much improved, if the schools and 
school-houses are not better, if land is not 
higher and produce higher, if the whole as¬ 
pect of the county is not changed for the 
better ? I know the answer must be yes, 
in some other parts of the State and I doubt 
not it is so here. Now 1 ask again how these 
things are brought about if there is no profit in 
farming ? I do not mean to say that there are 
not occupations that sometimes pay better at 
the time, but I believe it to be true, that, in the 
long run, all things considered, farming will 
compare favorably with other occupations. It 
must be remombered, in this connection, that 
if it does not pay so well as mercantile pursuits 
sometimes do, farmers do not take such a course 
as merchants do to make it pay. As soon as 
the merchant gets a little surplus he puts it 
right into his business to increase and enlarge 
the sources of his income, while it is too often 
the case that farmers prefer to invest an extra 
fifty or hundred dollars in some railroad stock 
or some other manner to investing in real and 
permanent improvements, by which they would 
eventually realize a sure and safe per cent, in¬ 
terest. They seem to forget that every acre of 
reclaimed or improved land forms a sort of re¬ 
served or sinking fund which will pay not only 
old debts but the cost of its own improvement. 
They should also leave out of the question such 
men engaged in agriculture as show by their 
raodo of farming that they would fail at any | 
thing else. I do not believe the experiment has 
been fully and [airly tried yet, and I long to see 
it carried through so as to show the result on 
this very point. 
But apart from the consideration of dollars 
and cents there are other and higher considera¬ 
tions which should have an important influence 
in the decision of the question whether farming 
will pay. 
It is natural for us'all to get interested in the 
plans of improvement which we have ourselves 
originated and perfected. If we build a house 
or clear a field, or drain a meadow or reclaim a 
swamp, if we plant an orchard or a nursery, or 
raise a beautiful animal, we find something 
which insensibly touches the heart and gives us 
a satisfaction which no language can describe. 
I may also say which no money can buy or pay 
for if it could. No matter whether these local 
attachments are founded in the deceptions of 
the heart or not, they are the true sources of 
sensibility, and they repay in satisfaction and 
pleasure all the toils of farming. 
We agree entirely with the above very sensible 
remarks, and in addition we can say from the 
testimony of old farmers in this vicinity, that 
forty-five to fifty years ago, very few in the 
surrounding counties were free from debt, many 
of them being deeply involved; now they gen¬ 
erally not only own their farms clear, but many 
have considerable sums of money at interest, 
or are the possessors of large amounts of bank, 
insurance, and railroad stocks, and other pro¬ 
perty. It is the most absurd thing imaginable to 
say that “ farming does not pay.” Look at the 
value of lands and their improvement through¬ 
out the eountiy. Who created this value ? 
the farmers have done the principal part of it, 
though mechanics and manufacturers have 
greatly assisted. 
From the Journal of the N. York Stale Ag. Society. 
PALMER WORM. 
Cambridgr, Mass., August 25, 1853. 
Hon. II. P. Johnson : 
Dear Sir —Permit me to offer to you some 
remarks on the Palmer Worm of New-England. 
This is the same insect whose ravages, in or¬ 
chards and among forest trees in New-York, are 
described by Dr. Fitcii, in the Journal of the 
New-York State Agricultural Society for Sep¬ 
tember. It has occured, at least once before, 
in great numbers, in New-England, within the 
memory of persons now living, who have un¬ 
hesitatingly applied to it during its recent visita¬ 
tion, the name of the Palmer Worm by which 
it was formerly known to them. The following- 
short account of it, first printed in 1797, under 
the article Insect , in the second edition of Dr. 
Deane's “ New-England Farmer and Georgical 
Dictionary,” may be interesting at the present 
time. 
“The Palmer Worm, a wanderer, as its name 
signifies, is a small worm, about half an inch in 
length, with many legs and extremely nimble. 
It appears at different times in different parts of 
the country. I have seen them only on apple 
trees and oak trees, in any great abundance. 
They give trees the same appearance that the 
canker worm docs. They appeared in the 
county of Cumberland [Maine] in the year 
1791, about the middle of June, eating off' the 
covering of the leaves on both sides, and leaving 
the membranous part entire. The following- 
year there were none to be seen, and I have not 
known them in any place two years in succes¬ 
sion. The seeds of them may be constant, 
wanting only a particular state of the weather 
to produce them. The spring which preceded 
their appearance, had been remarbably dry, 
both in April and May. The history of this 
insect is so little known, that I will not under¬ 
take to say how t!uw may be successfully op¬ 
posed. I made smokes under the fruit trees 
without any apparent effect. As they let them¬ 
selves down by threads, they may be thinned 
by shaking the trees and striking off’ the threads, 
Their ravages had not any lasting effects, for 
the orchards that had been visited by them, 
bore plentifully the following year,” 
By many persons this insect has been mis¬ 
taken for the Canker Worm ; but the latter in¬ 
sect differs essentially from it in all its stages, 
and may be readily known by having only ten 
feet, to wit, six before and four behind, which 
compel it to crook up its back with every step 
of its hind feet, and give to it a kind of halting- 
gait. The Palmer Worm, on the contrary, has 
sixteen feet, and is very “ nimble” in its mo¬ 
tions. Moreover, it does not grow to much 
more than half the length of the Canker Worm, 
and does not begin to appear on the trees till 
the month of June, about the time that the 
Canker Worms disappear. 
My attention was called to this insect on the 
tenth of June, when a few of them were found 
on trees in my garden. In the course of the 
same month, several letters were addressed to 
me from various parts of New-England, most of 
them accompanied by specimens of the worms, 
and containing interesting details concerning 
the extent and amount of their depredations 
upon fruit and forest trees. These specimens, 
together with others from my own trees, were 
put into a glass jar, and were supplied with fresh 
leaves daily. Many of the worms perished from 
the attack of minute ichneumon insects; but 
all the rest completed their transformations 
before the 2oth of July. Meanwhile, besides 
answering all the letters received concerning 
this destructive insect, I wrote for our agri¬ 
cultural papers five separate articles on the 
same subject. These were printed in the Mas¬ 
sachusetts Ploughman for July 9th, in the Bos¬ 
ton Cultivator for July 16, in the New-England 
Farmer of the same date, in the Middlesex Far¬ 
mer, and in the Journal of Agriculture for July, 
Nothing but the pressure of official engagements, 
during my busiest season of the year, prevented 
my drawing up a more full and scientific de¬ 
scription of the insect on the 9th of July, when 
one of the worms had completed its transforma¬ 
tions and had taken the winged form. It was 
not till the 19th of the same month that 1 was 
enabled to prepare for publication a communica¬ 
tion, wherein the classification, scientific name, 
and characteristics of this insect were first made 
known. This communication appeared in tho 
Cambridge Chronicle of the 23d of July ; and 
an extract from it in the Massachusetts Plough¬ 
man of the 30th of the same month. Referring 
to these papers for other particulars, 1 have now 
only to offer some remarks on the scientific name 
of the insect. 
In the Cambridge Chronicle it is stated that 
the Palmer Worm, in its winged state, is a small 
moth, having a brush-like snout, formed by the 
projecting palpi or feelers, and that it belongs 
to a group or tribe called Tineadje, and to the 
genus Rhinosia of Treitschke, or Chcetocheilus 
of Stephens;”—that “most of the insects be¬ 
longing to the above-named tribe are of small 
size, and have diminutive specific names, ending- 
in ella," and that “ as this insect frequents the 
orchard (in Latin pomelum), it may be called 
Rhinosia pometella." I consider myself for¬ 
tunate in having correctly made out the genus 
of this moth, a task of no little difficulty, and 
not to be accomplished without an examination 
of the living insect; for, after death the feelers 
spread and become pendent, and thereby lose 
their snout-like character. 
Dr. Fitch objects to the name above given, 
probably because Rhinosia somewhat resembles 
Rhinotia, a name long- since applied by Mr. 
Kirby to a genus of weevils. Professor Agas¬ 
siz, on the contrary, retains both of these names 
in his “ Nomenclator Zoologicus,” and in his 
“ Index Universalis,” and in the latter without 
any distinguishing sign, showing that either is 
to be rejected. In fact, the resemblance be¬ 
tween these words is more apparent than real; 
and they differ enough from each other in sound 
and meaning-. Rhinosia (though badly formed) 
is an adjective, used as a noun, and derived from 
rhin , the nose or snout. Rhinotia is a com¬ 
pound word, derived from rhin , and ms, the 
ear. The rule of pronunciation is, that in words 
derived from the Greek and ending in tix, &e. ( 
the f retains its original simple sound, Rhino- 
