REVIEW OF PROFESSOR JOHNSTONS ROTES OR AMERICAN AGRICULTURE CONTINUED. 
51 
VALUE OF DOGS. 
A little girl near Cincinnati was lately 
seized by one of those abominable brutes, 
that semi-civilised man still persists in keep¬ 
ing as his fit companion, and her life near¬ 
ly destroyed, before those, whom her terrific 
screams brought to her assistance, could extri¬ 
cate her from her perilous situation. The bull 
dog had seized her by the throat so fiercely, 
that his jaws had to be pried apart, after his 
back had been broken, by a blow of a club, 
that was used to beat him off his human 
prey. 
The blood flowed in streams, and the flesh 
was so lacerated, it hung in shreds; and the 
poor child will carry the marks as long as she 
lives. This is one more item in our dog account. 
We have others. 
REVIEW CF PROFESSOR JOHNSTON’S NOTES ON 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURE CONTINUED. 
We continue the comments which we com¬ 
menced last month, upon these notes. 
It is evident the writer only saw a few of our 
farm houses, or he would not have said “ they 
are commodious and generally well arranged ;” 
neither would he have said “ the kitchen is 
always the largest apartment in the house.” 
This was notoriously the case in the old-fash¬ 
ioned farm houses of New England, and among 
some of the substantial old Dutch farmers, as it 
always should be; but it is equally notorious 
that many of the modern farm houses have ap¬ 
parently been in one respect modeled after the 
Capitol at Washington; that is, the architect has 
made it a study to see how inconvenient and 
inappropriate, for the purpose, he could possi¬ 
bly construct a building, and how many little 
miserable, dark passages, and illcontrived little 
rooms he could crowd within four walls, up 
stairs and down stairs, and among these, not 
one could be found suitable for a commodious 
kitchen. Such is the fact in regard to many a 
modern American farm house. 
The isolated out houses, which seem to strike 
the writer with so much force, are a peculiarity 
that is carried to a greater extent in America 
than in any other country. “The entire ab¬ 
sence of all appearance of grain stacks ” noticed 
by the writer, shows he did not extend his trav¬ 
els into the southern nor western states, where 
he might have seen a score of stacks around a 
single farmstead, any one of which would fill 
all the buildings upon the newly-commenced 
farm. Instead of its being a fact that “ all 
crops of corn and hay are housed,” in this coun¬ 
try, much the largest portion of all that is 
grown in the west and south, and the quantity 
is enormous, never was beneath a roof, however 
rude. It is to be regretted this excellent writer, 
who is disposed to give his countrymen so much 
correct information of ours, could not have seen 
much more even than he did, in the few months 
he was with us; and have seen a part of the 
country, too, that has been but a few years in 
possession of the all-subduing Anglo-Saxon 
race, who are driving the red man far away 
from the ancient haunts of his fathers, and 
changing his hunting grounds into cultivated 
fields. No doubt, while undergoing the transi¬ 
tion, these incipient farms must have a very 
unprepossessing appearance to one so accus¬ 
tomed to the highly-cultivated estates, fenc¬ 
ed with the neat green hedge rows of Eng¬ 
land. 
The statements in the following sentences are 
entirely too general, and will not give so cor¬ 
rect information as is desirable. He says: 
“As may be supposed, vegetation proceeds 
very rapidly. In the northern states, though 
the winter can scarcely be said to be broken 
up till April, barley is generally ready to be 
cut early in June; wheat is ready towards the 
end of the same month. Oats are ripe in July; 
Indian corn in September, and the buckwheat 
crop immediately succeeds the corn.” 
Here are a succession of mistakes. The fact 
is, the area of the United States is too large and 
too varied in climate, to be comprehended by 
the inhabitants of a small island. Even the 
people of one of the states, that harvest 
wheat and oats in May, can hardly conceive it 
to be a fact, that in another state of the same 
Union, the harvest time for the same grain is 
September. Long after the period when Indian 
corn is ripe enough for eating in Louisiana, 
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine begin to 
think of planting. In the above paragraph, the 
writer says “barley is ready to cut early in 
June, in the northern states.” The above-named 
states are the northern ones, and their barley is 
often sown instead of reaped in June. While 
but little wheat, except that sown in spring is 
ever raised, and certainly in the northern part 
of those states, that is cut in September. Oats, 
in the southern part of New York, may be ripe 
early in July, while in the northern part they 
are still green in the latter part of August. 
There are some things in the following sen¬ 
tence worthy of comment: “ It is scarcely exag¬ 
erating to say that, after a slight shower during 
the night, succeeded by a fine, sunny day, you 
see the crop growing. Certain it is, that, meas¬ 
uring barley stalks in the morning, you will 
