AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
FOIl THE 
IT arm, Grardexi, and Honseliold. 
“AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST H15ILTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AM* MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.” — W ashinston. 
orange & co., ) . ESTABLISHED IN 1842 i $1.50 per amum, in advance. 
PUBLISHERS AND PROPRIETORS. f ' •< SINGLE NUMBER, 15 CENTS. 
OlHce, 245 BROABWAT. ) Published also in German at $1.50 a Year. ( 4Copiesfoi-$5 ; 10 for $12 ; 20 or more, $leach. 
Entered according; to Act of Congress, in November, 1872, by Orange Judd & Co., at the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
VOLUME XXXI.—No. 12. NEW YORK, DECEMBER, 1872. NEW SERIES—No. 311. 
[COPYRIGHT SECURED.] 
AFTER THE GREAT SNOW-STORM ,— Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
In many parts of the Northern States the 
scencr depicted by our artist in the above en¬ 
graving happens yearly. Not uncommonly the 
■winter opens ■with a heavy fall of snow, some¬ 
times equal to two feet on a level, and this, 
when driven into heaps and banks by the 
north wind, makes it necessary for backwoods¬ 
men to turn out and “ break roads.” Then the 
neighbors come out each with a yoke of cattle— 
for horses would be useless for this work—and 
one mounted on snow-shoes leads the way, fol¬ 
lowed by the oxen, who waddle through the 
deep snow slowly and clumsily ; but they beat 
down tiie snow witli their great limbs, and when 
five or six or more yoke follow each other, a 
broad track is soon made. So they proceed, stop¬ 
ping now and then that a great tree, overloaded 
and broken down with snow and fallen across the 
road, may be cut out. By and by a drift is 
reached, into which the leading oxen plunge 
until nothing but their noses, elevated as much 
as possible, and the tips of their horns, cau be 
seen. But the snow settles down over their 
backs as they wallow through the deepest part, 
and then as they emerge they look as though 
they swam in a sea of the purest foam, which 
rolls down the side of the drift in little ripples, 
and drops off their great sides. The others fol¬ 
low, and the “beautiful snow” that has been 
woven by the fingers of the north wind into 
a fringe of purest white and most delicate 
pattern around the edge of the woods, is all 
broken down and soiled, and its beauty all 
gone. This is the way some look at it, hut those 
whose business it is to battle witli snow, and 
beat it down, making roads through it, or chop¬ 
ping down trees and making logs in it, or 
wading through it to get to their barns to feed 
their hungry cows, and shovel it away from 
tlieir stable-doors, or hunt beneath it for the ax 
or what-not, carelessly left out to be snowed 
under—why, they vote it a nuisance, without 
considering how they would do tlieir work in 
the woods, or haul tlieir great loads, or go sleigh¬ 
riding, if it were not for a great snow-storm^ 
