100 _ THE CULTIVATOR. March, 
thereby made more durable. The castings are taken 
from the furnace and placed in a vat, containing a 
solution of vitriol in water, which takes off the 
sand or scale from the iron. They are then put upon 
grind-stones revolving rapidly by water-power, 
brought to a polished surface, and afterwards coated 
with a blue varnish to prevent rust. Thus a new 
plow, when put to work, needs no scouring, and 
will keep bright in the most adhesive soil. 
In addition to the manufacture of plo-ws, these 
gentlemen make a great variety of other agricultu¬ 
ral implements, and all by machinery adapted to the 
purpose. When any new tool or machine, or any 
new form of an old one, is to be made, they set im¬ 
mediately about inventing machines by which it 
can be manufactured with accuracy, and which shall 
do the work of many men. 
I may conclude to give, in another communica¬ 
tion, drawings and descriptions of some of the more 
important articles of manufacture that I noticed, 
and which struck me as being very useful and per¬ 
fect. F. Holbrook. Brattleboro ’, Vt., January 
20, 1850. 
Studies for the Farmer. 
Eds. Cultivator —Some weeks since, I received 
from my friend, F. Holbrook, Esq., of Brattlebo- 
xo’, Vt., in pamphlet form, a Report of the Ver¬ 
mont Legislature, on the formation of a “ Nation¬ 
al Board of Agriculture,’ 5 a copy of which was 
published in the December number of The Cultiva¬ 
tor . Of the importance and merits of the Report, 
I need not here speak ; it commends itself to the fa¬ 
vorable consideration of every intelligent, thinking 
farmer in the country, who may be so fortunate as 
to obtain a copy of it. 
As a text for a few remarks, I make use of the 
following short extract: “ Too many of our intelli¬ 
gent, enterprising young men—observing the sad 
condition of the soil, and trained to false impressions 
—suppose that the agricultural profession, instead 
of being an open field for the efforts of science to 
improve, is but an arena fit only to be occupied by 
the illiterate and unenterprising, under the guidance 
of blind tradition. They accordingly press in mas¬ 
ses into other callings, filling them to overflowing, 
and leaving the * 1 Art of Arts’ to its fate.” 
The above extract, is a truthful picture of the 
past, but we have many good reasons for hoping 
a brighter day is dawning; intelligent and educated 
men of all the varied professions and pursuits of 
our oountry, are turning their attention to the im¬ 
portance of this “ Art of Arts,” and they are in 
various ways, lending their aid and influence to its 
improvement. Their precepts and examples are 
having a visible and salutary effect upon the great 
mass of practical farmers throughout nearly all sec¬ 
tions of the older and long-settled parts of our 
country. And, added to this, the unwearied efforts 
of many of the master minds of the age, who from 
their laboratories, are scattering broadcast all over 
the civilised world, the great truth that agriculture 
is a science, as w T ell as an art, and that by the ap¬ 
plication of correct scientific principles to the prac¬ 
tical labors of the husbandman, his crops may be 
readily doubled, or tripled, upon the same area of 
soil, and that the profits of his labors will be in¬ 
creased in nearly the same ratio, while at the same 
time the manual and brute labor will be greatly 
lessened. These statements are not problems, yet 
to be solved, for facts innumerable, both in England 
and in this country, have fully settled the question. 
But the above are pecuniary considerations, and they 
are not trifling ones, neither, in a community where 
“ dollars and cents” possess such a potency, such 
a charm. But there is another view connected with 
this subject, in which dollars and cents come not in 
competition. I mean the right culture of the mind 
of the farmer, for there have been, and are now, 
11 false impressions ” in reference to this. The late 
Mr. Colman, in some of his writings, has the fol¬ 
lowing truthful remarks: “The time has been, when 
it was thought that any dunce could make a farmer,” 
But he said it “required quite as much intellect 
and study to make a good farmer, as it did to make 
a good Lawyer, Doctor or Minister.” 
To know how to skilfully wield the axe, the 
scythe, and the other implements of the farm, must 
be the result of long practice in early years, and it 
forms an important part of the young farmer’s edu¬ 
cation. To cultivate and improve the mind, (that 
attribute which so pre-eminently qualifies man to 
reason and investigate) forms another important 
part of the farmer’s education, and this, also, re¬ 
quires practice, united to study, and habits of close 
observation, for in the bosom of man his Maker has 
implanted instinctive longings to know and compre¬ 
hend the “how and the wherefore” of what he 
sees in the world around him, by which, and for 
which he lives. To gratify these “ instinctive long¬ 
ings,” it seems to me there is no other pursuit in 
which there is a wider range for useful study, and a 
broader scope for the application of a larger num¬ 
ber of the sciences for practical purposes, than in 
that of the farmer. 
The investigation of that beautiful and allwise 
arrangement of matter, that has so intimately and 
mysteriously linked together the dead earth, the liv¬ 
ing plant, and the moving animal, is a source of 
ever-living study and instruction. The study of the 
earth or soil, is of great practical use to the farmer, 
and necessarily brings him in contact with geology, 
one of the most interesting and instructive of the 
modern sciences. All soils were primarily the re¬ 
sult of geological agencies; the fertility of one soil 
and the barrenness of another, depends very much 
upon its geological formation, and the relative pro¬ 
portions in which the mineral constituents of the soil 
exist in it. But as there is no treatise on geology 
wholly or particularly adapted to agriculture, it 
must be studied as a science. The study of which 
will amply compensate any one for all labor bestowed 
upon it, for it carries the student in point of history 
back long series of ages before the appearance of 
man upon earth, and unfolds to the mind some of 
those mighty convulsions and throes of nature, that 
have fractured and rent asunder the solid strata, and 
uplifted them at every angle of elevation, and thus 
brought to the “ light of day,” the fossil remains 
of myriads of once living and organised creatures 
of the older world, great or small, of every shape, 
form and color. The study of these “ medals of 
creation” fills the mind with wonder and amazement, 
both in respect to the creative powers of the Deity, 
and the immense antiquity of this our globe. The host 
of extinct races of creatures and plants that onc-e 
flourished upon this globe, “though dead yet speak,” 
and they speak, too, of a length of time, so vast in 
the aggregate, so indefinite, that in contrast with 
them, the most ancient monuments of Greece or 
Rome, or the hieroglyphics of Egypt, are but as 
things of yesterday. Design is evidently stamped 
upon all the works of the Creator, and we have eve-' 
ry reason to believe that all those multitudinous 
changes to which this globe has been subjected in- 
by-gone ages, were but unbroken links in the great 
chain of events, as connected with the present ra- 
