235 
t 
I 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
however, every rod of fence on a farm should be 
substantial, and durable. It is the cheapest, in 
the long run, where a permanent enclosure is in¬ 
tended Temporary or moveable division fences 
may be made on a different plan, much cheaper, 
and more convenient for many purposes. Of 
these we shall treat hereafter, with gates, bars, 
and the means of connection with the different 
fields of the farm. 
A single remark may here be made relative to 
the excessive amount of inside fencing to which 
many of our farmers are addicted. It has fre¬ 
quently seemed to us in passing some farms, that 
their owners not only delighted in that sort of ex¬ 
travagance, but equally delighted in making all 
the extra labor they could, in plowing and har¬ 
rowing their fields in “ short bouts ” and turn¬ 
ings, encouraging the growth of bushes by the 
fence sides, and making work generally—all 
against good economy, and intelligent husbandry. 
The increasing scarcity and prices of fencing 
stuff may do away with a part of this evil habit; 
but we can assure our farmers generally, that 
taken together, half the extent of fences now 
standing on the average of our farms, would be 
more profitably applied in the better mode of con¬ 
struction, and proper laying out of enclosures. 
■-B>~> ■ - p i r n >-»- 
Blinks from a Lantern..X, 
BV DIOGENES RF.DIVIVUS. 
A SCIENTIFIC FARMER. 
Too much faith is, perhaps, as great an evil as 
that positive unbelief which is the besetting sin 
of so many cultivators. While Ezra Hanks 
bristles at every new thing presented to his no¬ 
tice, and with a very significant application of his 
thumb to the lip of his nose, exclaims, “ No you 
don’t,” bis neighbor, Solomon Noodles, Esq., and 
Major of the Bungtown militia, swallows every 
thing whole, and to the expounder of every new 
invention, graciously responds, “just so, I see.” 
I had to give Major Noodles a call on my way 
back from the home of Ezra Hanks. He lives 
about a mile out of the city, and has one of the 
most curious establishments in the country. He 
has plenty of money, which of course he inherited 
in part, and got the rest by marriage. He has a 
reasonable amount of family pride, and an excel¬ 
lent conceit of Major Solomon Noodles, the son 
of Solomon, extending back in an unbroken line 
of Solomons to the first settlement of the coun¬ 
try, some two hundred years ago. He is the 
sixth in regular descent from the first settler, and 
the wisdom and dignity of the whole line of Noo¬ 
dles are concentrated in his august person. 
He is a liberal patron of the fine arts, inven¬ 
tors, and scientific men in general. He talks 
fluently of poetry, painting, music, architecture, 
landscape gardening, scientific cultivation, and 
high farming. He has expended a good deal of 
money upon gardeners, and architects, and is 
likely to expend a good deal more, before he gets 
his house and grounds arranged to suit him. The 
great trouble with his science seems to be, that 
it grows so rapidly, that he has nothing perma¬ 
nent around him. His weakness is well known, 
and he takes every professional gardener and ar¬ 
chitect, in want of a job, into his confidence. 
The house was built by his father, and, as was 
the custom of the times, rejoiced in parallelo¬ 
grams and straight lines, without ornament, from 
ground sill to peak. He celebrated his advent to 
possession by a thorough overhauling of the old 
mansion, which had quite too much good timber 
in it to be thrown away, and yet was an unwor¬ 
thy residence for a scientific farmer and a gentle¬ 
man. So Major Noodles, witli his architect, 
dropped the roof to an Italian flatness, and called 
it a villa. The approacli to the house was from 
one side, and ran in straight lines up to the back 
door. This carriage drive was ornamented with 
a row of elms upon each side, and the plot in 
front of the house was set out with evergreens, 
mainly white pines and black spruce. 
This arrangement stood for about three years, 
when a wandering gardener, and scientific gen¬ 
tleman, fresh from the domain of the Duke of 
Devonshire, came along, and suggested that it 
was a pity that an old family like the Noodles, of 
which the Major was the distinguished represen¬ 
tative, should not have a more tasteful arrange¬ 
ment of his house and grounds. The Gothic 
style of architecture was altogether fashionable 
now in England, and great attention was paid to 
landscape gardening, in which the Noodles place 
was sadly wanting. There was not a scrap of 
lawn to be seen, and the rides and walks were 
altogether too angular. 
The Major was converted, and up went the flat 
Italian roof into four model gables, with sharp 
peaks, and innumerable brackets. The wings, 
however, were not changed to correspond, the 
Major having read somewhere, that a composite 
architecture, produced the happiest effect in a 
picturesque region like his own. The straight 
carriage walk was curved to the line of beauty, 
and the elms re-set. The plantation of ever¬ 
greens in front was removed, and the ground 
seeded down to lawn, leaving the front of the 
house exposed to the full sweep of the north¬ 
west winds. 
The model of the Duke of Devonshire satisfied 
him for about two years, when a canny Scotch¬ 
man came along, and suggested that there was a 
great deal of waste land about his premises, that 
a gentleman ought not to have a carriage drive 
wind around to the back door, as if it were 
skulking and ashamed of itself. A direct drive 
to the front of the house in straight lines would 
be altogether more open and manly. This was a 
new idea to our Solomon, and it struck him so 
forcibly, that he set the Scotchman to work, and 
a drive was laid out through the lawn, the elms, 
were moved again and the gates transferred to 
the front of the mansion. The Scotchman 
turned out to be a Vermont Yankee, who had 
never seen a landscape garden in his life. This 
arrangement abides for the present, and the com¬ 
posite architecture is still in the ascendant. 
The treatment of the soil, and of the stock 
upon the farm has been after the same type of 
science. Major Noodles is a liberal patron of the 
agricultural press—subscribes for every book and 
paper that is offered at his door, and sends for all 
the English journals and treatises upon his favor¬ 
ite art that he can hear of. He reads a consider¬ 
able more than he digests, and is always of the 
opinion of the last paper that he reads. One 
season the sub-soil fever takes him, and he runs 
the thing into the ground deeper than the deepest 
—reckless alike of the character of the soil, and 
of its condition as to drainage. If there is any 
thing in sub-soiling, and he firmly believes there 
is, he is going to secure all the advantages. He 
subsoils sandy loam, that lets water through like 
a sieve, heavy clays, and muck swamps, that 
have nothing but surface drainage. Another sea¬ 
son the Michigan plow takes him with the grasp 
of a giant, and he puts on three yoke of cattle, 
and turns a four-inch black loam turf at least ten 
inches beneath raw clay that never saw sun-light 
before. 
He invests largely in concentrated fertilizers, 
particularly in the improved and nitrogenized va¬ 
rieties. Occasionally he makes a hit with Peru¬ 
vian guano, and gets a great growth of hay or of 
turnips, that astonishes the natives, and raises 
Major Noodles a few pegs in their estimation— 
“ Guess old science is some pumpkins arter all.” 
He has an eye for fast horses and fine cattle, but no 
fixed opinions as to the best cattle for his locality, 
and his particular branch of husbandry. He bas 
tried pretty much ail sorts of stock during the last 
ten years, Durhams, Devens, Alderneys, and 
Ayrshires, and has now crosses of all these upon 
native stock. He does not seem to have any 
plan in breeding, but believes in mixing up the 
blood well to see what will come of it. His fa¬ 
vorite bull now, “ The Legion of Honor” has the 
tail of a Devon, the barrel of a Jersey, and the 
horns of a Durham, with several points it would 
be difficult to locate. Pie goes in for improved 
sheep, swine, and poultry, and is mixing things 
as fast as possible, in hope of getting something 
a little better than the light of science has yet 
shone upon. 
His barn is of the amplest dimensions, and fur¬ 
nished with all the modern improvements, but 
has the misfortune to be never half filled with hay 
or stock. His faith, however, is strong that he 
will, at no distant day, cut two hundred tuns of 
hay on less than fifty acres, though he has not yet 
reached seventy-five. He believes in high farm¬ 
ing, and when he gets things fixed up a little 
about the house and grounds, he is going to give 
more attention to the farm proper, and show that 
some things can be done as well as others. Pie 
has great faith in science, and still greater faith 
in the ability of Solomon Noodles to illustrate, 
and illuminate the teachings of science. Perhaps 
our lantern will go out tvlien Solomon gets all 
the gas turned on. 
-<a-<-- 
For the American Agriculturist . 
Greasing 1 the Wagon Tire. 
A good many years ago I hired a “ green hand ” 
just “come over” to work on the farm, and I 
had a good deal of fun that Summer, even if he 
did not turn out very profitable at first, though he 
was a good faithful fellow, and after a long school¬ 
ing became first-rate help. One morning I want¬ 
ed to go to market before daylight, and I told 
Patrick to be sure and grease the wagon wheels 
well over night. Morning came and I started off, 
Patrick having assured me the wheels were well 
greased ; but wlnen I had traveled about ten miles, 
I had for my amusement the hardest kind of 
music you ever heard, sque—e—e—k, sque—e— 
e—k it went, until I wished Pat had been there, 
so that I could have taken grease enough out of 
him to stop the miserable noise. 'When I got 
home, of course I called him to a pretty sharp ac¬ 
count. “ Sure and I grazed ’em all, round and 
round,” said he, “ and ye can see for your own 
eyes, where I spiffed some of it on the woodens.” 
True enough, he had given all the tires a thorough 
oiling, as the marks on the felloes, or “ woodens” 
as he called them, plainly showed. I couldn’t scold 
for laughing, and I've laughed a good many times 
since when I’ve been put in mind of it by seeing 
a man waste his work by putting it in the wrong 
place. 
There was my neighbor, who had the hardest 
looking lot of stock I ever saw, and they were 
