76 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
RENSSELAER AG. SOCIETY. 
Agricultural School and Pattern Farm. 
The annual meeting- of the Rensselaer Co. Agricultural 
Society, for choice of officers and the transaction of oth¬ 
er business, was holden at Troy, on the 6th of February. 
The President, Wm. P. Van Rensselaer, Esq. deliv¬ 
ered an excellent address—it was a well written, com¬ 
mon sense document. He spoke of the general advantages 
of agriculture—of the necessity of basing all its opera¬ 
tions as far as possible on system —of the necessity of un¬ 
derstanding the nature of soils and manures, before they 
can bp best adapted to each other—of the advantages of 
encouraging all branches of home industry, particularly 
domestic and household manufactures—of the importance 
of the silk culture, the practicability of which he consi¬ 
dered well demonstrated. 
After the delivery of the President's address, Gen. 
Yiele introduced a resolution commendatory of the pro¬ 
ject for establishing an Agricultural School and Pattern 
Farm, ami after some pertinent remarks, introduced Dr. 
Lee, the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture in 
the House of Assembly. 
Dr. Lee made some very interesting observations oni 
the necessity of scientific knowledg* in connexion with! 
agriculture, designed chiefly to show the advantages which J 
might be derived from such an institution as had been 
spoken of—an institution, where, as he said, should be j 
taught thoroughly and alike, the practice, the science, and 
the profits of agriculture and its kindred branches. He i 
showed that in proportion to the skill and intelligence by 
which labor is directed, would be the productive earn¬ 
ings. He cited Massachusetts as an example. No where, 
he said, were the laboring classes as well educated as 
there. That state contained one twenty-second part of 
the population of the Union, and produced last year, one 
hundred millions of dollars icorth of property , viz: 80 mil¬ 
lions of manufactures, 15 millions of agricultural products, 
and 5 millions from the sea. If the other states, said Dr. 
Lee, had produced property in the same proportion to (he 
population, the aggregate would have been twenty-txco 
hundred millions of dollars l 
Dr. Lee was followed by Mr. Cook, one of the profes¬ 
sors in the Rensselaer Institute, who followed up the sug¬ 
gestions which had been before made, with some very 
appropriate and interesting remarks. He spoke of the 
means of wealth which are lying dormant or wasting use¬ 
lessly away, from an ignorance of their value. He allu¬ 
ded particularly to manures, and in this connection stated 
some startling facts. He said he was much surprised the 
other day, at meeting with an Englishman from London, 
who had come here for the purpose of purch:> ng bones, 
and who had succeeded in engaging a large (entity at 
seven dollars a ton. Mr. C. said there were slaughtered 
annually in the neighborhood of Troy, thirty thousand 
head of cattle, the blood and oflal from which is nearly 
all wasted—the bones lie bleaching in the air, or are used 
to fill up holes, and the blood goes into the Hudson. 
Mr. C. alluded to the great waste of other manures. 
About fifteen thousand bushels of ashes were annually 
bought in the vicinity of Troy, for which the farmers and 
others were paid 12£ cents per bushel. After taking ouf 
twenty cents worth of potash from each bushel of these 
ashes, they were sold to the Long Island farmers at 12$ 
cents a bushel—the original cost. 
There are, said Mr. C., about 10 thousand bushels of 
oysters used every year in this neighborhood. It is well 
known by some, that the shells are an excellent manure; yet 
very few were saved here—they are mostly used for fill¬ 
ing up in grading the streets, &c. and are commonly co¬ 
vered many feet with earth. 
Mr. Grove of Hoosick, next spoke. He was a native 
of Germany. In that country, the science of agriculture is 
taught in all the schools—the law requires that every 
teacher should be able to instruct in both the principles 
and practice. Every college in Germany, said Mr. G., 
has a professorship of agriculture. 
Considerable interest was evidently aroused in relation 
to the subject of establishing an Agricultural School and 
Pattern Farm—a subject to which we are happy to see 
considerable attention is being directed from various_sec~J 
lions of the state, and we hope there will be no relaxa¬ 
tion of effort till the object is fully and successfully ac¬ 
complished. 
FOOD OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 
We have been much interested by the examination of 
a Report made by Mr. Senior of England, on the subject 
of provision for the poor. It is the result of an extensive 
observation, and wide correspondence. The following 
is given as the quality of food used by an agricultural la¬ 
borer, having a wife and four children. 
AMERICA. 
New-York —-Tea, coffee, wheat bread, meat twice a 
day. 
Massachusetts —Poultry, meat or fish, with rye or In¬ 
dian bread twice or thrice a day. 
Mexico .—Maize prepared either in porridge or their 
cakes, and beans, with chile, a hot pepper of which they 
eat large quantities as seasoning. 
Carihagena. —Chiefly animal food. 
Venezuela. —Maize, vegetables, and fruit. 
Uruguay.— Animal food. 
Ilayti. —Plantains,sweet potatoes, and other vegetables. 
EUROPE. 
Norw-ay —Herrings, oat meal porridge, potatoes, oat 
meal bread, bacon, and salt beef perhaps twice a week. 
Brandy in general use, distilled from grain or potatoes. 
Sweden. —In the south potatoes and salt fish; in the 
north porridge and rye bread. 
Russia. —Rye bread, buckwheat, and sour krout; soup 
seasoned with salt and lard. 
Denmark. —Rye bread, inferior coffee, cheese and but¬ 
ter. 
Hanseatic Towns. —Rye bread, potatoes, bacon seldom, 
porridge, cheap fish. 
Mecklenberg. —Good sound food, occasionally meat, 
beer. 
Wurtemberg —Pea soup, potatoes, rye bread, meat once 
or twice a week. 
Holland. —Rye, cheese, potatoes, beans and pork, but¬ 
termilk, meal soup, beer. 
Belgium. —Bread, potatoes, and milk. 
France. (Havre.) —Bread, vegetables, cider, rarely 
| meat, coffee and molasses. 
France. (Brittany.) —Barley bread, potatoes, cabba¬ 
ges. 6 lbs. of pork weekly. 
France. (La Tjoire.) —Bread and vegetables, bacon or 
other meat now and then. 
France. (Bordeaux.) —Rye bread, Indian corn, salt 
ami butcher’s meat rarely. 
Piedmont. —No meat, a little wine, bread of maize and 
wheat flour. 
Portugal. —Salt fish, corn bread, vegetable soup with 
oil or lard. 
Greece. —Corn or wheat bread, olives, pulse, salt fish 
and meat occasionally. 
European Turkey. —Bread, rice, greens, olives and 
onions, meat about once a week. 
Malta .—Millet soup, barley bread, cheese, herbs,when 
in employ; out of work, bread and soup only. The same 
remarks apply to Sicily and Italy. 
Mr. Wallace gives the following as the weekly ex¬ 
penditure of a farm laborer in England, whose family 
consisted of himself, wife, and two children, and whose 
wages were 9s. weekly, or about $2,25. 
Two pecks of oat meal, Is. 6d. Five pecks of pota¬ 
toes, 2s. id. Milk, Is. Loaf of bread, 6d. Half ounce- 
of tea and half pound of sugar, 5d. 1 lb. of bacon, 6d. 
Fish, 6d. Coal, oil, soap. Is. 4<h Tobacco, 3d. Rent, Is. 
The food of the Irish laborer is mostly potatoes; ofthe 
Scotch, oat and barley bread, and fish. 
The following singular facts are stated in Mr. Chad¬ 
wick's Report on the operation of the English Poor Laws. 
It shows a most perverted state of things in that country, 
one precisely the reverse of that which should exist; 
and would it not be well to inquire in this country, whe¬ 
ther the loafer and the pauper do not fare better than 
those who struggle to maintain their independence by 
honest industry? If so, we are approaching results not 
widely different from those that are bowing down the 
population of the old world with taxation and distress. 
