116 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
floods cause waste and desolation. The mushroom grows up in a night, 
and withers in a day. 
The farmer should be the last to be dissatisfied with his condition. 
Of all classes, he is the most independent. He produces within him¬ 
self more of the necessaries and comforts of life than any other class. 
If he does not find the elements of happiness on the farm, bis search 
for them elsewhere, I fear, will be in vain. But he must not forget 
that it is the province of the mind to arrange and combine these ele¬ 
ments ; and that it becomes qualified to perform this office, in propor¬ 
tion as it is enlightened and cultivated. The mind, like a garden, will 
yield the most grateful fruits when nurtured with care; and few have 
more opportunities, or are better requited for their labors, in cultivat¬ 
ing both, than him who thrives by the plough. 
TO PROMOTE HEALTH. 
RECIPROCAL ACTION BETWEEN THE SKIN AND OTHER ORGANS. 
In tracing the connexion between suppressed perspiration and the 
production of individual diseases, we shall find those organs which 
possess some similarity oflunction, sympathize most»closely with each 
other. Thus the skin, the bowels, the lungs, the liver and the kidneys 
sympathize readily, because they have all the common office of throw¬ 
ing waste matter out of the system, each in a way peculiar to its own 
structure; so that if the exhalation from the skin, for example, be 
stopped by long exposure to cold, the large quantity of waste which it 
was charged to excrete, and which in itself is hurtful to the system, 
will most probably be thrown upon one or other of the above-named 
organs, whose function will consequently become excited; and if any 
of them, from constitutional or accidental causes, be already weaker 
than the rest, as often happens, its health will naturally be the first to 
suffer. In this way, the bowels become irritated in one individual, and 
occasion bowel complaint; while in another, it is the lungs which be¬ 
come affected, giving rise to catarrh or common cold, or perhaps even 
to inflammation. When, on the other hand, all these organs are in a 
state of vigorous health, a temporary increase of function lakes place 
in them, and relieves the system, without leading to any local disorder; 
and the skin itself speedily resumes its activity,'and restores the balance 
between them. 
One of the most obvious illustrations of this reciprocity of action, is 
afforded by any convivial company, seated in a warm room in a cold 
evening. The heat of the room, the food and wine, and the excite¬ 
ment cf the moment, stimulate the skin, cause an afflux of blood to its 
surface, and increase in a high degree the flow of the insensible per¬ 
spiration ; which thus, while the heat continues, carries oil’ an undue 
share of the fluids of the body, and leaves the kidneys almost at rest. 
But the moment the company goes into the cold external air, a sudden 
reversion of operations takes place; the cold chills the surface, stops 
the perspiration, and directs the current of the blood towards the in¬ 
ternal organs, which presently become excited—and, under this excita¬ 
tion, the kidneys, for example, will in a few minutes excrete as much 
of their peculiar fluid as they did in as many of the preceding hours. 
The reverse of this, again, is common in diseases obstructing the se- 
secretion from the kidneys; for the perspiration from the skin is then 
altered in quantity and quality, and acquires much of the peculiar smell 
of the urinary fluid. 
When the lungs are the weak paits, and their lining membrane is 
habitually relaxed, accompanied by an unusual amount of mucus se¬ 
cretion from its surface, cold applied to the skin throws the mass of 
the blood previously circulating there, inward upon the-lungs, and in¬ 
creases that secretion to a high degree. Were this secretion to accu¬ 
mulate, it would soon fill up the air-cells of the lungs, and cause suffo¬ 
cation; but to obviate this danger, the Creator has so constituted the 
lungs, that any foreign body coming in contact with them, excites the 
convulsive effort called coughing, by which a violent and rapid expira¬ 
tion takes place, with a force sufficient to hurry the foreign body along 
with it, just as peas are discharged by boys with much force through 
short tubes by a sudden effort of blowing. Thus a check given to per¬ 
spiration, by diminishing the quantity of blood previously circulating 
on the surface, naturally leads very often to increased expectoration 
and cough, or, in other words, to common cold.— Combe’s Physiologij. 
THE CULTIVATOR—NOV. 1836. 
TO IMPROVE THE SOIL AND THE MIND. 
MEMORANDA, 
FOR THOSE WHO WOULD IMPROVE IN HUSBANDRY. 
Draining, manuring, alternating crops, and root culture, are the best 
and cheapest means of increasing the profits of a tillage farm—they 
form the basis of good husbandry. 
1. Draining —The first requisite is to divest a soil of surplus mois¬ 
ture. Lands that are wet upon the soil or subsoil, will not bring good 
grain or grass. If the evil is owing to surface water, it stagnates in 
summer, and becemes prejudicial to crops growing upon it, and to ani¬ 
mals. If it proceeds from springs, it keeps the temperature of the soil 
too low for healthy vegetation. In either case it prevents the land be¬ 
ing worked early, or during wet seasons, and retards the decomposition 
of the vegetable matters, which should serve as the food of plants. 
When properly drained, wet or marshy lands are among the most pro¬ 
ductive soils, a3 they generally abound in vegetable matter, accumu¬ 
lated and preserved by water. Without draining, they are compara¬ 
tively unproductive, and are often nuisances. 
2. Manures are the true food of plants, be the speculations of theo¬ 
rists what they may. Every farmer may demonstrate this truth in his 
practice. We can no more obtain good crops from a poor soil, than we 
can obtain good beef from a lean pasture. Vegetable matters consti¬ 
tute alike the raw material for beef and for corn. The elementary 
matters of both are materially the same. Every vegetable and every 
animal substance, or whatever has been such, however nauseous and 
offensive, contains food for our farm crops; and the fertility of our 
soil, and the profits of our husbandry, will depend in a great measure 
upon the economy with which we husband this vegatable food, and the 
j judgment with which we apply it to our crops. Without good crops we 
I cannot rear good animals ; and without animals we cannot have dung 
I to enrich our grounds. Every crop we take from a field serves more 
I or less to exhaust the soil of iertility; and unless we return to it some 
j equivalent in the form of manure, it will in time become a barren waste, 
j Again, as animal and vegetable matters begin to ferment, and-to dissi- 
i pate their fertilizing properties, as soon as they are brought in contact 
with heat, moisture and air, they should be buried in the soil in the 
; spring at the farthest, in an incipient, state of fermentation. And as 
the hoed crops, such as corn, potatoes, beans, ruta baga, &c. thrive 
! best upon the volatile parts of manure, the long manure should be fed 
to them. The farmer who has a good soil, should lake care to keep it 
j good; and he who has a poor soil should strive constantly to make it 
[better, as every advance he makes in improving it, increases his pro¬ 
ductive capital. This preservation, or increase of fertility, cannot be 
[ well effected, without a due regard to 
i 3. Alternating Crops. Few soils will bear a repetition of the same 
(crop for successive years, even with the aid of dung, without diminu- 
i tion of product, whether in tillage or grass. One reason of this is, that 
; each kind of crop lakes from the soil a specific food, which other kinds 
| do not take in like quantity. Hence, during an intermission of four or 
five years there is ordinarily restored to the soil the specific food of that 
kind which it is capable of growing. Cultivated crops are sometimes 
grouped, in alternate husbandry, in three classes, viz. dry crops, em¬ 
bracing all the small grains, and which are most exhausting; 2d, grass 
crops, embracing timothy, orchard grass and other perennial varieties, 
|which exhaust less, but which run out, or sensibly diminish in product 
: in a few years; and 3d, green crops, comprising clover, turnips, &c. which 
pulverize and ameliorate the soil, and exhaust least of all. AVhere con¬ 
venient, a crop of one of each of these classes should follow in succes¬ 
sion, the grass continuing to occupy the ground while it continues to 
! yield a good crop of hay. If retained too long in grass, the soil be¬ 
comes too compact, and impervious to the genial influences of heat and 
air. It is particularly recommended, that two dry crops should not suc¬ 
ceed each other, except wheat or rye may follow oats, when the lat¬ 
ter is made a fallow crop upon an old grass ley. Although the deterio¬ 
ration under a bad system of cropping may be slow, and almost imper¬ 
ceptible, yet both sciehce and experience teach us that it is inevitable, 
and fatal to the ultimate hopes of the husbandman. Many of the old 
states afford lamentable evidence of this truth 
4. Root culture is one of the best gifts which modern improvement 
has bestowed upon husbandry. It gives the most animal food with the 
least labor ; it is, under good management* the most certain in its re¬ 
turns; it gives the most manure; it best ameliorates the soil, and fits 
it for dry crops; and it affords an important link in the chain of alter 
nation. It is considered the basis of good husbandry in Great Britain, 
[Flanders, Germany and France, and has transformed the county of 
Norfolk from a waste to the most profitable district in England. 
Highly as the beet culture is prized in France, as affording a mate¬ 
rial for the profitable fabrication of sugar, it is no less valued as an al¬ 
ternating root crop, and as affording a material for making good beef 
and good mutton. The roots that may enter extensively into our hus¬ 
bandry, are the potato (and the varieties of these that are best for ta¬ 
ble, afford the most nutriment to cattle) ruta baga, mangel wurzel, car¬ 
rot, parsnip and sugar beet. 
As subsidiary to the preceding cardinal points in good farming, we 
give the following, which, although they may appear to many to be 
hackneyed truisms, are nevertheless so important as to be worth often 
repeating. 
5. Keep none but good farm stock, whether as regards breeds or in¬ 
dividuals. Sell the worst of your flocks. Like produces like; and the 
gain in breeding from the best you have, greatly counterbalances the ex¬ 
tra price that the prime individual will bring in the market. A cow 
