THE CULTIVATOR. 
125 
this is, too great a partiality for animals bred by himself. 
In order to guard against this he ought to occupy himself 
more in looking for faults than in discovering merits in his 
stock; he ought to listen to every criticism he hears made 
upon them, even by those whose judgment he does not hold 
in h igh estimation—not, of course, with the view of being 
satisfied at once that the criticism is correct, but with the 
view' of satisfying himself, by accurate and candid examina¬ 
tion, whether it is so or not; and he ought frequently to see 
the stock belonging to other breeders, and fairly compare its 
merits with those of his own. 
I think it most probable, that in the foregoing observations 
nothing will be found which will give new and useful infor¬ 
mation to practical farmers; but I have been induced to sub¬ 
mit them to the English Agricultural society, because I con¬ 
ceive that one of the great objects of that society is the dif¬ 
fusion of knowledge connected with every branch of tann¬ 
ing. The best way in which it can be enabled to effect this 
object, is by those of its members who have paid attention 
to any of the divisions of farming operations, communicating 
to the society the results of their practice and experience. 
It will then be for the society to circulate, by any means in 
their power, such of these communications as it shall appear 
to them are likely to be useful to those engaged in the cul¬ 
tivation of the land. With this view I place this paper at 
their disposal._ 
Law Reforms. 
It w T as, we believe, Sir Matthew Hale, who called law the 
perfection of reason; and as the means of right, and the pre¬ 
vention of wrong, it is entitled to the respectful consideration 
of all. There is reason, however, to fear, that law is some¬ 
times perverted from its high purposes and legitimate func¬ 
tions, and made to minister to the ambitious, the selfish, the 
avaricious, and the baser passions of mankind; that right is 
forgotten in acquired power, and that wealth, rather than 
justice, is the lever that actuates too many of its ministers 
and professors. It cannot be disguised, that practices are 
covered with the sacred mantle of the law, and performed 
under its ostensible sanction, that, freed from this protection, 
would subject the performer to the most serious charges, af¬ 
fecting both honor and honesty'. So flagrant have some of 
these practices become; so utterly subversive of all right 
and justice; so demoralizing and oppressive in their results; 
that public opinion had been gradually awakening to these 
enormities, and was prepared to demand their abatement. 
It has become apparent, that the system of law practice, or 
carrying into effect the decisions intended to give justice to 
all, the humblest as well as the highest, needs a thorough 
reform, or a state of things will soon, if it has not already in 
a great degree arrived, in which redress of wrong to the 
poor will be hopeless, the name of justice a mockery; petty 
quibbling and a scramble for costs reign triumpnant in cm. 
temple of the laws; while the great mass of the people will 
be compelled to assume the power they have delegated but 
never alienated, the power of doing justice to themselves. 
These facts, so obvious to all, were regretted by the more 
honorable and high-minded part of the profession, who felt 
that the disgraceful practices of some, would be used as a 
reproach to all, and they were of course willing to adopt a 
system of reform that should remove the evils so justly ob¬ 
noxious, and which had enabled the litigious pettifogger, the 
half learned practitioner in the courts of law, to cheat the 
public, accumulate costs, and ruin thousands. 
The iniquities and extortions under colour of the law, 
though known to be frightful, had never been fully unveiled 
to the people; but now, when the public feeling seemed to 
demand expositions of this nature, the press began to co¬ 
operate in showing up the manner in which the framer, the 
expounder, and the administrator of the laws, in too many 
instanees, acted more with regard to the fees, than the sacred 
principles of right. The leading paper of the Knickerbocker 
for January', 1839, evidently by * 1 authority,’ was an admi¬ 
rable, though an alarming exposition of the practices resorted 
to, to delay justice, procrastinate causes, accumulate costs, 
and ruin the clients in our courts. The * Memorial,’ a pa¬ 
per conducted with spirit and ability at Seneca-Falls, was 
set up with the avowed purpose of advocating a reform in 
our system of jurisprudence, and its successive numbers 
have demonstrated beyond a peradventure the necessity ex¬ 
isting for such a movement. The practices exposed in these 
papers, as resorted to by some from whom the public had a 
right to expect better things, are such as would, or should, 
exclude the perpetrators from the society of honest, honora¬ 
ble men. The quibblings, the repetitions, the endless accu¬ 
mulation of words and folios, resorted to, to increase the 
costs, and retard, if not utterly subvert all salutary action of 
the law, revealed in the official records and papers there 
published, show a system of peculation, not to say swind¬ 
ling, worthy of the best instructed disciples of Daines Bar¬ 
rington. 
In compliance with the wishes and the demands of the peo¬ 
ple, a commencement was last winter made, which, if fol¬ 
lowed up as it must be, will restore the administration of the 
laws to its high standing, which in the nature of things it 
deserves. The great object must be, to simplify and render 
all the laws as easily understood as possible; to reduce the 
costs to a liberal, not an exorbitant compensation; to render 
the means of justice speedy, and open to all; and to punish 
without mitigation or escape, the man who degrades the 
name of lawyer by extortion, or legal dishonesty. A good 
beginning was made in the reduction of costs in some of out- 
higher courts, at the last session; and the schedule of fees 
must undergo still further examinations and reductions.— 
None are more interested in these things than the farmer, 
from whose hard earnings so large a portion of these exorbb 
tant fees are annually wrung. It is he who suffers most 
from the law’s delay, and who pays most dearly for the vex¬ 
ations and wrongs, which the insolence of wealth enables 
the avaricious or the unprincipled to heap on the poor. On 
these and kindred subjects the people must and will be 
heard. In submitting to the government of laws, mankind 
yield or delegate a part of their native rights, to secure the 
peaceable use of all; when this concession fails, they are at 
liberty to resume. Men submit to laws to escape from op¬ 
pression; when the elements of oppression and wrong be¬ 
come concentrated in the laws themselves, by the weakness 
or the wickedness of the enactors, then they come in contact 
with the unalienable rights of man, and will be found but 
threads of burnt tow on the limbs of a giant. 
If the profession of law has become so thronged, that such 
practices are necessary to give its followers a living, then 
let them go back to the field or the workshop and obtain an 
honorable livelihood, where they can eat honest bread. Our 
country is broad, our lands are fertile, competence and ho¬ 
norable distinction may be found in pursuits where tempta¬ 
tions to fraud are not so strong as in the profession allud¬ 
ed to, and in which a man may be useful without the 
constant danger of becoming infamous. Many of the noblest 
spirits of our land are lawyers; would that we were not 
compelled to add, some of the meanest and vilest are also 
lawyers. The first are as deserving of honor, as the latter 
are of contempt. Any system of reform that shall have a 
tendency to do away the evils so justly complained of; give 
equal and exact justice to all; strike at the root of all extor¬ 
tion and oppression, will be sure to receive the support of 
the first, and encounter the opposition of the last. By their 
fruits ye shall know them. We hope this subject will not 
be permitted to sleep; that the advantage gained will not be 
lost; but that a reform, equitable, just and thorough, will be 
carried through our system, retaining all that is valuable, 
giving ample compensation for services performed, but plac¬ 
ing the power of oppression, contumely and wrong, beyond 
the reach of those who now are the dread and the scourge of 
the people. In this reform we are sure of the support of the 
intelligent, the able, and the honorable lawyer; while in the 
ranks of opposition will be found those who fight for spoils, 
and whose censure is praise.— Genesee Farmer. 
Culture of Ruta Baga. 
[From the Farmers ’ Monthly Visitor.~\ 
Hon. Isaac Hill —Dear Sir—Believing ruta baga to be of 
great value to the stock farmers, and as the season for sow¬ 
ing it is at hand, I send you an extract from my farm journal 
relative to my mode of culture the first year, though, as it 
was my first experiment, I am far from thinking it to be the 
best mode. However, as I was pretty accurate in detail, its 
publication may be of use to my brother farmers, by induc¬ 
ing some one better acquainted with its culture than myself, 
to point out the errors in my process. 
In the fall of 1836, I broke up three acres of green sward; 
the soil a stiff loam; upon which I carted 150 single loads of 
coarse manure, and in 1837 planted with potatoes, there be¬ 
ing nothing peculiar in the management, or extraordinary in 
the crop. 
In the spring of 1838, I carted on sixty loads of well rotted 
manure, which I ploughed in, so soon as the ground was 
sufficiently dry, and on the 27th May 1 again ploughed, har¬ 
rowed, and after rolling smooth, marked it into squares of 
eighteen inches, and planted by dropping two or three seeds 
in each intersection, which was done by taking the seed from 
a.box, say a uuhiiiie/h lIaa biuijk/K-i— ^/~»v \»,-ijl o cino-lp liolp in 
the top. I sowed from the 1st to the 4th ofjuSe; onine 
23d began to weed, thinning out where the plants were too 
crowded, and setting out where deficient, which 1 continued 
to do occasionally when other work did not press, till the 
28th July. On the 26th October, I began to pull and cut, 
finishing on the 9th of November; and I found the plants 
last pulled as uninjured as the first, although they had been 
exposed to several severe frosts. They were pulled by hand, 
the workmen striking two plants together to shake off the 
dirt, and then throwing them down, where they lay spread 
for three hours to dry the loose dirt that still adhered to them; 
the tops were then twisted off, and the plants thrown into 
heaps for carting, so that each root was handled three seve¬ 
ral times. They might have been got into the cart with less 
labor, but my object was to get them into the cellar in a to¬ 
lerably clean state. Having heard much of the difficulty of 
keeping them in cellars, from their tendency to rot, I stored 
in one cellar 1,500 bushels without injury to a single root, 
and I have now, (May 5,) more than 100 bushels as full and 
as fair as when first placed there. The cellar was thirty feet 
square, on the bottom of which, eight inch timbers were plac¬ 
ed, and covered with plank two inches apart. The whole 
was divided into two bins, with one foot space between the 
bins, and one foot between the bins and cellar wall; the sides 
of the bins being made with narrow boards, with a space of 
four inches between each board. 
I fed out my twelve hundred bushels to my sheep, six 
hundred to my horned cattle, and the remainder to my hors¬ 
es. They all ate with avidity, preferring them to potatoes. 
For my horses and cattle they were merely cut with a spade; 
for the sheep they were passed through a vegetable cutter. 
They were carted in two carts, each containing thirty bas¬ 
kets holding more than a bushel, and weighing seventy-four 
pounds. The number of baskets was twenty-one hundred, 
and the whole weight seventy-seven tons. Number of roots, 
36,000—as put in the extract from my journal alluded to 
above. I am, sir, very respectfully, your ob’t servant, 
LEONARD JARVIS. 
Ruta Baga, Dr. 
To interest on three acres, at $100 per acre, . $18 
Twice ploughing three acres,. 6 
Harrowing and rolling,. 4 
Seed,. 2 
To 130 days’ work on above, viz: 9 days sowing, 85 
weeding, hoeing and setting, and 36 drying and cut¬ 
ting—130 days, or five months, at $13 per month,.. 65 
To 22 weeks’ board, at 9s. per week,. 33 
Cr. $128 
By 2,100 bushels, at 10 cents,.$210 
Profit, estimating at 10 cents,. 82 
Claremont, May 5, 1839. $210 
Remarks. —Compared with the price of other crops, this 
ruta baga was richly worth twenty cents the bushel: say it 
was worth only fifteen cents, the nett profits on these three 
acres of ground were one hundred and eighty-seven dollars. 
We are highly pleased to exhibit this evidence from one 
of the first, and we believe the most extensive practical far¬ 
mer in the state of New-Hampshire, in favor of the root cul¬ 
ture. He shows by this experiment what much manure will 
do for the ground for a succession of years: it gives double 
payment in a single year for the labor bestowed; and this 
double payment will extend itself into a series of from four 
to ten years, according to the capacity for retention of the 
soil to which it is applied.— Ed. Far. Mon. Vis. 
We call particular attention to the following article from the 
New-England Farmer. It is fraught with truth. 
Cause of High TTices. 
But one great and prolific source, as we honestly believe, 
of high prices, deficient labor, the luxury, waste and servility 
which prevail among us, is in the multiplication of banks 
beyond the business wants of the community, the extension 
of paper money, and the abuse of the credit system. Our 
honest conviction is, that the enormous increase of bank ca¬ 
pital beyond all reasonable limits, is destined to prove to the 
country in its various influences a source of immense evil. 
The calamities from which we have just escaped, are to be 
directly traced to this as their great origin; and, as matters 
are now going on, we have only to look forward to another 
explosion, as disastrous as that from which we have so re¬ 
cently recovered—’for come it must. Its arrival in the natu¬ 
ral course of things is as certain as the descent of water up¬ 
on an inclined plane, or the passing of the sun over the me¬ 
ridian. The creation of immense amounts of purely artificial 
and fictitious capital, produces a dangerous delusion with in¬ 
dividuals and on the public mind. If its effect w ere merely 
to increase the facilities and stimulate the powers of produc¬ 
tion, it would so far be well; but this it does not do except¬ 
ing in a very partial degree, and in an indirect form. This 
money is loaned to wdiat are called men of business—a class 
of men, who as far as they are money brokers, are the mere 
exchangers of commercial products, without any increase of 
their value, or speculators in lands, who add little or nothing 
to the wealth of the community. The increase in the nomi¬ 
nal value of real estate is of no advantage to the community, 
unless it is based upon some positive improvement, or in¬ 
creased productiveness of the soil. If a piece of land is sold 
to-day at five dollars an acre, and next week it is valued at 
ten dollars an acre, without any change whatever in its con¬ 
dition, how is the community in any respect benefitted, or its 
wealth increased? But on the other hand, the obtaining of 
land for agricultural purposes, for production, and the actual 
creation of wealth, is by this enhanced price rendered the 
more difficult to the man whose labor is his only capital—the 
man of all others in the community the most to be encou¬ 
raged. 
Then, again, the abundance of money itself lessens its va¬ 
lue, and operates to raise the scale of prices. The facilities 
of procuring credit and money induce recklessness—lead 
to all kinds of speculation—create a distaste for labor—en¬ 
courage the most luxurious expenditures—relax the bonds of 
moral principle—and convert the community into a popula¬ 
tion of gamblers. It is the true secret of the enormous frauds 
with which our community has been convulsed within the 
last two years, and of the prevalence of the gross and immo¬ 
ral principle, that a neglect to pay one’s debts to a corporation, 
or a fraud upon a corporation, is a different matter from one 
fnrnniiued upon an individual. 
In fine, it is me 
use and prolific source of specu- 
d fr & m 
lation—speculation, a matter pregniuL _, ;1u . 
which no more good has accrued, or can ever accrue, lo 
community, than from any other form of lottery gambling. 
These are, to a certain and considerable extent, the causes 
of the high prices of living; and under this system they must 
continue until we have another periodical explosion. There 
is no cure or preventive. There is not moral soundness 
enough in the community to afford any hope of amendment 
or of change, until another fit of delirium tremens brings us 
up, as the sailors say, “ all standing;” rubs out old scores, 
and then leaves us to start again in a new course of un¬ 
bridled profligacy, vulgarly called prosperity. 
Pruning. 
A great variety of experiments made in Europe by Knight, 
Van Mons, and Thaer, and in this country by Buel, Ken- 
rick, and others, have been made on the subject of pruning 
trees, and though the results did not perfectly agree on all 
points, yet they seem to fully justify the general conclusion 
that the best time for pruning trees is that period in midsum¬ 
mer in which there appears a cessation of the sap’s ascent, 
and w]iich lasts some three or four w'eeks. Those who have 
paid attention to the growth of trees must have remarked 
that the period of increase is divided into two seasons, dur¬ 
ing the first of which, or the one most active, the shoots that 
form fruit, flower or seed buds are formed; and the other or 
later summer’s growth is confined to the shoots that produce 
wood buds only.* “After the second growth is completed, 
the effects of the descending sap in the formation of new 
bark, is apparent in the healing up of new wounds, in parts 
of the stem or branches, which now proceeds with more ac¬ 
tivity than during any other season of the year. Branches 
pruned off smooth at the stem, though the latter be young, 
healthy, and containing a perfect pith, before or shortly after 
the completion of the midsummer’s growth, do not produce 
shoots from the edge of the wounds caused by their removal, 
which always happens, more or less, when pruning is per¬ 
formed on free growing trees after the fall of the leaf, and 
before the full development of the spring shoots and leaves. 
It is to be observed, however, that the reproduction of 
branches from the edge of a wound is greatly assisted by 
leaving a portion of the branch or shoot, on the parent branch 
or stem.” [Treatise on Planting.] 
The end desired to be attained by the operation of prun¬ 
ing must be kept steadily in view, or injury instead of bene¬ 
fit may be the result. If the tree is intended for timber, the 
leaves and buds that elaborate the sap, and increase the 
trunk by the formation of an annual circle of new wo<5d, 
should be kept as far from the root as possible, as in this way 
* We believe this is an error. Nature provides wood 
buds first, and fruit buds last. Trees have always leaf buds, 
though they do not always have blossom buds. Hence, a tree 
that bears abundantly, and bears its fruit late in autumn, is 
seldom an annual bearer, because it requires all its suste¬ 
nance to mature its fruit, and provide wood buds for the 
coming season. And hence, trees ripening their fruit early, 
as the cherry, gooseberry, currant, early apple, &c. are of¬ 
ten annual bearers, because the season permits them to ripen 
their fruit, mature their wood buds, and also to produce new 
fruit buds for the coming season. A ring-barked limb will 
give fruit buds, because the elaborated sap is all retained in 
it; while if not ring-barked it might produce only wood buds, 
because a portion of the elaborated sap passes to the trunk 
and roots.— Cultivator. 
