276 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
at a cost of less than one-half their previous 
selling value; thus by an investment of fifty per 
cent, in the value of their farms, the product has 
been increased one to two hundred per cent.! 
Now what speculation so good, as that; what so 
certain, and what more gratifying ? No increase 
of taxes, no additional labor, and yet double the 
revenue. So with better cattle, sheep, pigs, and 
horses. So, too, with convenient buildings and 
implements; and to these may be added orchards 
and fruits. The want of capital is the great bar 
to success with thousands of our farmers. They 
freely loan their money at six and seven per 
cent, interest, and frequently at great risks, 
when, by investing it on their farms in improved 
agriculture, the smallest amount so invested 
would undoubtedly pay them twenty. 
No, fellow-farmers, a truer adage does not 
exist, so far as your calling is concerned, than 
the uncouth words at the head of this article. 
A Countryman. 
extensively, and is commencing the preparation 
of the fiber by some of the newly discovered 
processes.— Louisville Journal. 
SCHOOL REMINISCENCE. 
FARMING ABROAD. 
For tlie American Agriculturist. 
POTATOES IN FROZEN GROUND. 
Your correspondent J. W. Briggs, seems in 
doubt whether potatoes will be fit for seed, if 
they have been frozen in the ground during 
winter. Doubtless they would not be as good 
for cooking as those dug at the proper time, un¬ 
less the winter was very dry; but last year I 
raised a volunteer crop from potatoes left in the 
ground, and I am certain—quite certain—they 
were frozen. The potatoes were not over three 
inches under ground, and the frost penetrated 
at least six inches during the winter, and we 
had scarcely any snow to protect potatoes or 
any thing else. It is a common thing to see a 
volunteer crop from potatoes thus left in the 
ground over winter, and in ground too that had 
not been plowed over four inches, while the 
frost penetrated at least six inches, as is com¬ 
mon with us. 
It is not too late for your correspondent to try 
the experiment. He may yet put some pota¬ 
toes in the ground to the depth of two or three 
inches, and they will surely freeze at that depth 
in New-York State between this and spring, 
and then he will thus be able to test theirmerits 
as seed potatoes, and remove all doubts. 
P. S. Brokaw. 
Middlebush, Somerset co., JY.J., Jan. 3, 1853. 
Flax Culture in the West. —Professor 
Wilson, of England, who has traveled through 
the Western States the past summer, estimates 
the present crop of flax grown in these States at 
200,000 to 300,000 tons, the product of as many 
acres of land. The yield of seed from this 
crop—for which it is mainly grown—will not 
fall short of 2,500,000 bushels, worth at the 
present prices not less than $3,250,000. The 
straw, which is turned to but little account, if 
prepared for the spindle, would be worth at least 
$5,000,000 more. Since the invention of Mr. 
Claussen for the preparation of flax cotton, great 
improvements have been made in the process of 
steeping the straw as a substitute for rotting. 
That of Mr. Buchanan, of Glasgow, appears to 
be the most perfect, by which a ton of the straw 
can be carried through all the various processes 
and come out ready for the spindle in the short 
space of twelve hours, and at comparatively a 
trifling cost. 
A company in Philadelphia are now engaged 
in the erection of machinery for preparing flax 
by Buchanan’s process 
The lion. II. L. Ellsworth, of Ind., has been 
engaged for a year or two past in raising flax 
Agriculture is looking up. It is a common 
remark that it has already secured the politi¬ 
cians, and made all the public beggars respect 
its claims. At home it may receive any favors 
it demands in earnest, and it is coming also to 
stand excellently well abroad. The fact that 
the farming interest is seldom forgotten in mak¬ 
ing up the news from any country now-a-days 
is in point. 
Whether or not California was a desert, was 
a much mooted question while it was knocking 
at the Union’s gate for admittance. The Cali¬ 
fornia papers are leaving no doubt upon the sub¬ 
ject now. They vaunt the fecundity of its soil 
daily, and instance such rich returns for the 
small labors of their husbandmen, as do not 
leave us at liberty to question that farming is 
profitable there. The fable of the old man, who 
on his death-bed, told his sons to dig the field 
well, for gold was hidden in it, is as applicable 
in its figurative sense as its literal one, even 
there. 
Oregon, where labor fetches good 
though not, of course, the prices that obtain in 
California or Australia—where the farmers lazily 
harrow in their seed wheat two or three years 
successively upon the same piece, without once 
ploughing, and } r et average twenty-five or thirty 
bushels to the acre, in most other grains, and in 
fruit, responds right handsomely to the hus¬ 
bandman’s efforts. The harvest of the past sea¬ 
son was abundant; and were it not that thou¬ 
sands pour in to consume their products, she 
would be a seller rather than a buyer among 
the Territories. 
The Hawaiians, such of them as are not down 
with the small-pox, or busy tinkering the run¬ 
ning-gear of the State, turn with unusual inte 
rest to develop the extravagant wealth of their 
soil. They are experimenting with the cultiva¬ 
tion of new plants and fruits, and devising means 
to stimulate to increased growth the old grains. 
The indigo plant, from the rapidity with which 
it spreads when once rooted, begins to be culti¬ 
vated, and peaches of a fine quality, a new fruit 
for those fields, have lately been raised. Judge 
Shaw has imported a good grist-mill all the way 
from Boston and the State of Maine, which will 
soon be in operation in Honolulu, and astonish 
the natives with its superfine wheat and Gra¬ 
ham-grits, rye flour, Indian meal, and hominy, 
for it is prepared to “turn to dust” all fashions 
of grain and corn. Bring the dusky natives to 
eating hominy, and give them a good breed of 
pigs for ham, and we will venture them in three 
years too good fellows to consent to be protected 
by the Russian Czar, or insulted by a French 
Emperor. The missionaries taught them to 
mend their roads with their gods as with so 
much rubbish; commercial intercourse taught 
them to put on skirted coats, and stove-pipe 
hats, even if they had no pantaloons to keep 
them in countenance; agriculture and a grist¬ 
mill will give them good Christian bread and 
cakes for food, and via the digestive organs, 
make sensible people of them. Farming is 
coming into vogue along the South American 
Pacific Coast. More wheat than ever before 
was sown last year throughout Chili, and the 
crops promise to be heavier than ever before. 
Farmers may well afford to hold up their 
consideration of the honor the world 
The following, from the pen of the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher, appeared in a recent 
number of the New- York Independent, and 
most graphically and truthfully portrays what 
we have seen and experienced. It seems to have 
been written expressly for the old school-house 
where we in our earlier days sat for six long 
hours daily, while being “ educated.” Well do 
we remember the backless seats formed of rough 
slabs, with four wooden legs, constructed after 
the most approved method for increasing the 
length of their muscular counterparts, since 
these were kept on the continual stretch to 
reach the floor. How absurd it really appears 
when we think of it, to send restless, growing 
children to the prison school-house, to be kept 
quiet for 3G00 minutes on such seats and for 
what ? Why to be called out for four to six 
minutes—one-sixtieth part of the school day 
at most—to go over a routine of a, b, abs. Let 
every one read this faithful picture, and inquire 
whether there are not now in his own vicinity, 
school-houses (?) to which this description will 
literally apply. 
It was our misfortune, in boyhood, to go to a 
District School. It was a little square pine 
building, blazing in the sun, upon the highway, 
without a tree for a shade in sight near it; with¬ 
out bush, yard, fence or circumstance to take 
off its bare, cold, hard, hateful look. Before the 
door, in winter, was the pile of wood for fuel, 
and in summer, there were all the chips of the 
winter’s wood. In winter, we were squeezed 
into the farthest corner, among little boys, who 
seemed to be sent to school merely to fill up the 
chinks between the bigger boys. Certainly we 
were never sent for any such absurd purpose 
as an education. There were the great scholars, 
the school in winter was for them, not for us 
piccaninies. We were read and spelt twice a 
day, unless something happened to prevent, 
which did happen about every other day. For 
the rest of the time we were busy in keeping 
still. And a time we always had of it. Our 
shoes always would be scraping on the floor, or 
knocking the shins of urchins who were also 
being “educated.” All of our little legs together, 
(poor, tired, nervous, restless legs, with nothing 
to do,) would fill up the corner with such a 
noise, that every ten or fifteen minutes, the 
master would bring down his two-foot hickory 
ferrule on the desk with a clap that sent shivers 
through our hearts, to think how that would 
have felt, if it had fallen somewhere else; and 
then, with a look that swept us all into utter 
extremity of stillness, he would cry, “Silence! 
in that corner! ” It would last for a few min¬ 
utes ; but, little boys’ memories are not capa¬ 
cious. Moreover, some of the boys had mis¬ 
chief, and some had mirthfulness, and some had 
both together. The consequence was that just 
when we were the most afraid to laugh, we saw 
the most comical things. Temptations, which 
we could have vanquished with a smile out in 
the free air, were'irresistible in our little corner, 
where a laugh and a spank were very apt to woo 
each other. So, we would hold on, and fill up; and 
others would hold on and fill up too; till by-and- 
by the weakest would let go a mere whiffet of a 
laugh, and then down went all the precautions, 
heads in _, .. ___ _ w . _ 
holds them in, and certainly, in consideration of an d ol ) e 'vent off, and then another, and another, 
the cash that jingles in their pockets, to have 
their own way in most matters.— N. Y. Times. 
Old Tree. —The editor of the Litchfield En¬ 
quirer has received apples from a tree that was 
brought from Hartford by one of the first set¬ 
tlers of the town. The tree has borne apples 
about one hundred and thirty years. It now 
measures fourteen feet round the trunk. It 
bore twenty bushels the past season. The fruit 
is a sweet winter apple .—Hartford Courant. 
ouching the others off like a pack of fire crack¬ 
ers ! It was in vain to deny it. But as the pro¬ 
cess of snapping our heads, and pulling our ears 
went on with primitive sobriety, we each in turn, 
with tearful eyes and blubbering lips, declared 
“ we didn’t mean to,” and that was true; and 
that we “ wouldn’t do so any more,” and that 
was a lie, however unintentional; for we never 
failed to do just so again, and that about once 
an hour all day long. 
Besides this, our principal business was to 
