March, 1851). 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
81 
limes, when the surface of the ground appears 
drv, tl k: moisture of the subsoil shows itself in the 
r pilar Of the house, and rises through the walls 
and rooms of the building, discoloring the paper- 
hangings, diffusing a musty odor in all the lower 
apartments, and rendering them unwholesome 
and cheerless. 
The healthfulness of a site is affected also by 
its relative exposure to strong winds. A certain 
amount of wind is desirable : it drives away fogs 
and brings in a constant supply of fresh air; it is 
also bracing and exhilarating in Winter and Sum¬ 
mer. But there may be too much of a good thing. 
If the wind blows directly off from a large body of 
water, (as, for example, in Spring, from a frozen 
lake,) or across the brow of a hill, or through a 
gap between mountains, it will probably bs dis¬ 
agreeable and unhealthy. 
3. Choose a spot easily accessible. One must 
not go so far in pursuit of a healthy site, as to 
get out of the reach of his fellow-man. Poets and 
“ geniuses ” may perch their houses on high peaks, 
if they choose, but common folks, who have some¬ 
thing to do almost daily with the public highway, 
and with the neighboring village, with its post- 
olfice, church, stage-house or railway station, 
blacksmith-shop, etc., should live where they can 
go and come, at ease. And then, few people aie 
so unsociable, or so regardless of public notice, 
that they do not wish to build where their friends 
can easily visit them, and sec how they live and 
prosper. Yet the tendency is to err on the other 
side. Many men (we won't speak disparagingly 
of the ladies !) like to live close upon the public 
street, where they can see whoever goes by, and 
learn what their neighbors are doing. Some 
houses are built, purposely, with the kitchen on a 
line with the parlor, stretched along upon the 
roadside, so that the inmates can have one eye 
on their work, and another upon the street. 
Would it not be better to set the dwelling a few 
rods back from the road, and to keep the kitchen 
in its appropriate place, in the rear of the house 1 
All this would be still consistent with accessibili¬ 
ty. The house might be retired from the public 
gaze and from noise and dust, and yet not far 
from the society or the conveniences of the neigh¬ 
borhood and town. Accessibility has reference, 
also, to the road on which a house is placed. If 
it is a uniformly rough, muddy, hilly, or other¬ 
wise bad road, the location will be so far objec¬ 
tionable. It will be a constant annoyance to the 
household, a hindrance in hauling loads over it, 
and a serious obstacle to sociability. 
3. Choose a pleasant site. All persons may not 
agree as to what this consists in ; but no one will 
quarrel with us for saying that it is one free from 
the sight of offensive objects, and which com¬ 
mands a pleasing prospect. It would evince bad 
taste in a person to plant his house directly op¬ 
posite a barn-yard or slaughter-house, or distil¬ 
lery, or tan-yard. Then, there are other objects, 
less disagreeable, but which should be avoided 
in laying the foundations of a permanent home. 
Rather choose a spot from which the eye can 
range over distant hills, green fields, cultivated 
farms, gardens and tasteful dwellings. And to 
secure such a pleasing prospect, build, if possible, 
upon an elevated site—not necessarily upon a 
hill, toilsome of ascent, and exposed to bleak 
winds, but upon a gentle eminence, lifted above 
the damps and frosts of the valley, and raised up 
so as to command a view of a large slice of the 
earth’s surface. Such a situation is always more 
cheerful and inspiring than one upon a dead level. 
The air is purer, drier and more bracing; and 
then the surrounding landscape, changing as it 
does from month to month throughout the year, 
is a gallery of pictures painted by no mortal ar¬ 
tist. 
- ^ ^ - >-«!» -- 
Profits of Single Grape Vines- 
We have often urged all our readers to set out 
at least one or two grape vines somewhere in 
the garden or door-yard—not usually to raise 
grapes for sale, but to secure a supply for home 
consumption. The first cost of procuring and 
setting a vine or two, or three, is trifling, while the 
product is large and of great value. A grapevine 
requires but little ground room, and whoever has 
a few feet only of soil by the side of the dwelling, 
may put out a vine, where there may not be even 
room for a fruit tree to expand its branches. The 
vine may be trained up over a porch, or on the 
sides of the dwelling itself. 
On page 337 of last volume (Nov. No.) we gave 
an account of two vines (a Concord, and a Hart¬ 
ford Prolific) which yielded GO lbs. of luscious 
grapes the 2d year after planting. These were 
unusually well rooted when set out, but are an 
indication of what may be obtained very soon 
after planting. We now give another item which 
we recently gathered from our old friend and long¬ 
time subscriber, Stephen Haight, of Dutchess Co., 
N. Y. He has an Isabella grape vine, 12 years 
old, which is trained upon a trellis, and branches 
out about 25 feet each way from the root. The 
past Autumn he picked from this single vine two- 
hundred and twenty six pounds (22G), leaving at the 
same time fifty pounds of unripened grapes which 
were afterwards made into wine. (In all 276 lbs.) 
The ripe bunches were carefully looked over, and 
the green, bruised, and decaying berries cut out 
with a pair of scissors. They were then packed 
precisely according to the directions we gave in 
October last (Vol. 17, page 307). Dec. 22, when 
grapes were a rarity in the city, Mr. Haight sold 
the product of his single vine here, for $56)-, 
(25 cts. per lb). Pretty well for one vine. 
But Mr. Haight “ owns beat ” by a neighbor, 
who has an Isabella vine some 25 years old. It 
covers an arbor extending off' from the house. 
Three years ago, when an account was kept, this 
single vine netted $70 worth of grapes sold. This 
vine we think is not outdone by any oilier one in 
the country. Perhaps it may be—if so let us hear 
of it. 
But aside from these unusual cases, a grape 
vine that will annually yield five or ten dollar’s 
worth of this excellent healthful fruit for home 
consumption, is a thing that pays, and we believe 
every family in country, village and city may have 
at least one such vine in a year or two, if they 
will put out two or three vines this coming Spring. 
Some will say “ Jill this is fine talk”—others will 
practice upon it and reap the reward. 
--- - - 
Look After the Sugar Orchards. 
[The following article was designed for the February 
Agriculturist , but arrived too late—sfme of its sugges¬ 
tions are still seasonable however.—En.] 
A man who has a good “ sap bush, and knows 
how to use it, is fortunate. But we have, within 
a few years past, seen many a grand old grove of 
sugar maples cut remorselessly down, and made 
into cord-wood or saw logs, merely from the mis¬ 
taken notion that “ maple ” sugar don’t pay. 
Now we don’t believe a word of it—on agricul¬ 
tural lands. If we had a sugar bush—as we have 
not now, our land not yielding maples of the right 
kind—we would preserve it as the apple of our 
eye. We would have it well underbrushed and 
clean, and laid into grass ; the sun should shine 
into it; the cattle should graze, and lie down 
under it in Summer; and oh! what times we 
would have there in sugar making ! wouldn’t we 1 
Now is the time to have the wood cut- and 
hauled into the “ camp,” all split, and nicely piled 
under cover, close by the shed where the kettles 
are sc*. The buckets should all be cleaned, piled 
and ready for use ; the “ spiles,” made of the 
cleanest of Sumach, all sharp, and ready to drive 
when the “ bitt,” or “ gouge ” has made the cut 
in the trees to receive them. 
We don’t believe in “boxing” trees with the 
ax. It is a barbarous mode, and we have seen 
many a noble bush ruined in ten years by such 
inhuman girdling before the trees had really be¬ 
gun to do their best. A well managed sugar 
bush grows better with age, as the sun is grad¬ 
ually let in upon it, and the trees become accli¬ 
mated to the open atmosphere. So take as good 
care of it as you would ofyour apple orchard, and 
it will quite as well repay your care and pains¬ 
taking. Of the luxury of Maple sugar we won’t 
now talk. Every housekeeper knows-its value, 
and it is always worth fifty per cent more at the 
“storekeeper’s” than the “boughten” article. 
We once knew a poor man, with a large family 
of children, thin and cadaverous; but getting a 
chance to take a neighboring sugar bush on shares, 
towards Spring, the little barbarians all got fat as 
pigs by the time “sugaring” was over. A reli¬ 
able, luxuriant fact is a good sugar bush 1 
Western New-Yorker. 
How Long will Trees Live. 
Why may not trees live forever 1 Is there a 
necessary limit to their existence ! Do they, like 
animals, have their infancy, youth, maturity, de¬ 
cline, and death 1 This is the common opinion. 
It is believed that they die, not solely because 
accidents befall them, or diseases assail them, or 
because they are cut down by the woodman’s ax 
—but because, escaping all such contingencies, 
their cells and vessels become hardened and in- 
crusted, and the fluids cease to flow, and they 
perish from sheer exhaustion and old age. They 
wear out and run down, like an old clock. 
Let us overhaul this opinion a little. Vege¬ 
table physiology shows that the living parts ol an 
exogenous tree, that is a tree growing by addi¬ 
tions to the outside, are: (1) the extremities ol 
the stems and branches, including the buds ; (2) 
the extremities of the roots and rootlets ; and (3) 
the newest strata of wood and bark. These are 
all that are concerned in the life and growth of a 
tree ; and these are renewed every year. The 
functions of life in an animal are carried on 
for a whole life-time in one set of organs; and 
when these organs wear out, the animal dies. 
But the life processes in a plant are carried on 
through organs annually renewed, and hence the 
plant is not subject to decay, for the same reason 
that the animal is. Every year the crude sap 
rises from the roots to the leaves, where it is di¬ 
gested, and from whence it descends, leaving de¬ 
posits on the way, of new buds, bark, wood, ami 
roots. If, then, all that is concerned in the life 
and growth of a tree is annually renewed, mak¬ 
ing the living and active parts of a tree never more 
than one year old—why should not the tree con¬ 
tinue to live on for an indefinite period 1 There 
seems to be no necessary reason, no cause in¬ 
herent in the tree itself, why it should die. 
Agarn: a tree is not, philosophically speaking, 
an individual, like a man, or any animal. It is a 
community, an aggregation of individuals. The 
only real individual in a plant is the first cell of 
which the plant was originally composed. Every 
bud on a tree may also be considered an indi¬ 
vidual, since it has in itself all the elements of an 
