1846, 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
15 
known; mule paths are their only roads, and mules’ 
backs, or those of the women, the only means of car¬ 
riage. Draining is an agricultural resource little known, 
and little needed; not so however of irrigation, the 
proper application of which in particular districts has 
quadrupled the products of grass lands. 
Manures are every where husbanded with the utmost 
care, and their odors are widely diffused through all the 
most thriving farm villages. The use of tuns upon 
wheels to distribute liquid manures is common in the 
neighborhood of Zurich and Berne. The method of 
planting field crops is without order, and drilling I have 
in no instance seen. Potatoes are planted at random in 
the field, though very thickly; the tops are cut at har¬ 
vesting and dried for the winter eating of the goats, 
and the ground dug. over thoroughly with an imple¬ 
ment resembling ©ur potato-hook, though vastly more 
rude in its construction. The crops of Indian corn I 
have seen have been good. It is just now ripening in 
the valleys, and the last crops of hay are being gathered. 
Apples of very fair appearance and taste are plentiful in 
the lower districts, and pears abound on the borders of 
lake Thun, and along the banks of the Rhone. Plums 
grow in profusion about lake Zug, of a purple color, 
the size of the green gage. They are dried in large 
quantities, and form a considerable article of trade. 
The pasturage of the mountains is good but short, 
and the higher pastures are fed upon during only four 
or five weeks of the heat of summer. The successive 
ranges of upper, middle, and lower pastures, are occu¬ 
pied by the herdsmen with their flocks, at different pe¬ 
riods of the summer, as the severity ofithe weather, or 
scarcity of food may determine. In ordinary seasons, 
however, the migrations from lower to upper, and up¬ 
per to lower pastures occur at regular intervals of time, 
and it is not a little exciting scene, to meet with a 
troop of eight or ten hundred cows with their noisy 
bells upon some wild mountain pass, defiling under the 
marching orders of two or three rough looking herds¬ 
men, to some new pasture ground among the hills. The 
caeese is made upon the mountains, and in autumn 
brought down by sledges over the early fallen snows. 
The best cows are said to yield 30 to 40 lbs. of milk a 
day, through the summer, and two cwt, of cheese is the 
average product for the season. 
The chalets, or huts of the herdsmen, are rudely 
built of logs, notched together at the corners, as are our 
western cabins, with wide sloping roofs, and shingles 
held in their places by timbers loaded with stones. 
It is somewhat remarkable that in a country so little 
adapted to a general and improved practice of husband¬ 
ry as Switzerland,—where the hopes of a season may 
be ruined in a night-time,—'Should have sprung up one 
of the first agricultural institutions in the world. I re¬ 
fer to that of M. Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, about 10 miles 
from Berne. Nearly a hundred pupils are in attendance, 
from all the different nations of Europe, not a few Eng¬ 
lish among the number. Unfortunately, I lost the op¬ 
portunity of paying it a visit. Its reputation is in Eu¬ 
rope, of the highest character, and the success of M. 
Fellenberg, both in the practice of husbandry and in¬ 
struction, undoubted. 
A glimpse of Swiss country, as it comes through the 
window at which I sit, will close my letters for the 
year. A mile off, across the Rhone, rise mountains 
whose tops are 6000 feet above sea level; they are just 
touched with snow upon the crests of the bare lime¬ 
stone; 800 feet down, stunted firs are scattered, and 
group together thicker and thicker 1500 feet below. 
Little chalets, and spots of green grass, maybe next dis¬ 
tinguished; below, precipices and fir forests blend to¬ 
gether, and trees with yellow leaves mingle with the 
evergreen. Further down upon a sloping side of the 
mountain, is a hamlet of a dozen chalets, all the wealth 
of whose inhabitants, consists in the goats or cows that 
browse on the few acres of pasture around them. At 
the edge of the mountain, cottages of a better character 
appear, and numerous vineyards. After all, appears the 
valley of the Rhone, rich in grasses, scattered over 
with orchards, and across the way a garden filled with 
corn, and beans, and cabbage, with an occasional holly¬ 
hock or dahlia—altogether as much like a garden on 
the Hudson, as you can suppose one to be, under the 
shadow of the Alps, and on the meadows of the Rhone. 
Yours truly, D. G. Mitchell. 
NEATNESS IN FARMING. 
We have somewhere heard the remark, that with the 
good farmer, every thing gives way to his business— 
that utility is all, and appearance nothing;—hence you 
are not to expect neatness about his dwelling, his door- 
yard being cut up into mud by the farm-wagon and the 
manure cart, and the contiguity of barns, pig-pens, and 
kitchen, such as convenience, and not freedom from the 
peculiar odors of hog-yard and rich manure-heap, may 
dictate. 
Now, to speak bluntly, this is all nonsense. It so 
happens, that in farming, neatness and thrift almost in¬ 
variably go together. The same love of order which 
prompts the farmer to clear his yard of broken barrels, 
old hoops, fragments of boards and sticks of wood, and 
whatever else defaces and defiles his premises,—also 
prompts him to have a place for every thing and every 
thing in its place, which is calculated to bear upon real 
and substantial profit. 
Some of the very best farmers with whom we are ac 
quainted,—whose eminent success and heavy profits, 
separate them in this respect in bold distinctness from 
the rest of their neighbors,—are patterns of neat¬ 
ness; and the touch of their hand in the expulsion of 
every kind of nuisance is visible all over their farms. 
Their door yards show that the master is “ at home;’’ 
the barn-yard, which is not so near the house that all 
the butter and cheese manufactured is flavored with 
the effluvia, exhibits the same neatness, even where 
all the refuse of other places is collected for enrich¬ 
ing in due time the rest of the farm. A farmer of 
our acquaintance, with 160 acres, in whose farm-yard 
we could scarcely ever discover a wisp of straw in the 
wrong place, remarked, “ O, I don’t attempt to make a 
great deal from my farm—I expend so much in im¬ 
provements, that my clear profits are only about a thou¬ 
sand dollars a year.” Another of those neat farmers, 
in whose fields, cockle, docks, and chess, obtain no foot¬ 
hold, nor along whose fences a solitary elder bush or 
nettle is ever seen, raised twenty-seven hundred dollars 
worth of farm produce at the prices of 1844; and both 
of these farmers live in Western New-York, where pri¬ 
ces are comparatively low, entirely away from the pe¬ 
culiar advantages of market which nearness to great 
cities gives. 
Now, let no one say that these remarks are made at 
the wrong season of the year, and that nothing can be 
done for neatness and order in the winter. The same 
general rule, in some shape or variation, has an almost 
infinite number of applications. The care of domes¬ 
tic animals in winter, needs pre-eminently the ap¬ 
plication of this rule. No animal can thrive well in 
the midst of dirt. Even a pig does not love dirt for 
dirt’s sake—he only happens to be so much of a philo¬ 
sopher, or rather stoic, that he is willing to endure 
dirt for the sake of a soft and cool bed in summer; 
for it has been found that these animals thrive better 
and fatten much faster when kept clean and well cur¬ 
ried . 
Horses and cattle are often neglected in cleanliness 
We have actually known some who did not clean t h< 
manure from horse stables for months, allowing it grad¬ 
ually to thicken under foot with the accumulating litter 
till afoot in thickness,—and reasoning doubtless as the 
boy did who combed his hair once a month, and was 
astonished that such torture and trouble from the ope¬ 
ration could be endured daily by other people. A far¬ 
mer who does his own chores, can hardly afford to keep 
his horses so finely as the gentleman of wealth, w: 
has a man for no other purpose; but every one should 
have his stable floor perfectly clean at least twice every 
day, once in the morning, and once at night before Id - 
