162 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
life, the olive will yield you no oil, nor the tig-tree its.fruits, in the sum¬ 
mer of manhood-, the harvest of autumn will disappoint your hopes, and 
a cheerless winter of age will come upon you, embittered by regrets of 
neglected opportunities of providing comfortably for yourselves, and of 
doing good to others. You have before you worthy examples, in the in 
dustry, enterprise and intelligence of your fathers. But neither talents, 
nor wealth, nor virtues are hereditary. You must build upon your own 
foundation—you must become the artificers of your future fame and for¬ 
tune. You must yourselves enrich your minds, sow the seeds and ma¬ 
ture the good plants, if you would reap the abundant harvest, and enjoy 
the reward. The elements of education which you have gathered in the 
schools, are the paper upon which you are to record your characters—the 
mere implements of usefulness. They will profit you only as you use 
them with diligence and good judgment. But the standard of your ac¬ 
quirements must not be graduated by the past. Every age demands a 
greater degree of mental culture, than the one which preceded it; and it 
behooves you to qualify yourselves for that which now dawns upon your 
mental vision. The more you learn to depend upon yourselves, the more 
you will find developed capacities and energies, of which you are yet un 
conscious of possessing—the more likely you will be to prosper in life. 
The sapling which is sheltered by the towering pine, or wide-spreading 
oak, is neither so strong nor so graceful, as that which grows up without 
shelter, and acquires strength and solidity from the bufferings ot the winds 
and storms. The plant that is nurtured in the shade is not so beautiful— 
its blossoms are not sofragrant,npritsfruitssorich,as the form, the flower 
and the fruit of that which grows in the glare of solar light. 
The culture of the mind should engage your early attention, that you 
may sooner profit by its counsels and its powers. Mind is the great mas¬ 
ter power, which-instructs, guides and abridges human labor—the grand 
source of intellectual pleasure—a faculty which distinguishes man from 
the brute, and which, as it is more or less cultivated, marks the gradations 
in civilized society. Say not that you have no leisure for this, tnat your 
time is engrossed in providing for your animal wants. - Franklin found 
time to bestow upon his mind, high and useful culture, amid the cares 
and labors of an active mechanic’s life. The hours that the avocations of 
the farm allow to study, amount, in the aggregate of early life, to months 
and to years. Knowledge is power; it is wealth; it is respectability; it 
is happiness; it endures with life. The mind may be likened to the soil. 
Both are.given to be improved; and the measure of our enjoyments, and 
the welfare of society, depend upon the good or bad culture we bestow 
upon them. Indolence may be compared to the coarse marsh plants, 
which feed upon the soil and taint the air, without yielding any thing 
comely or useful in return, for man or beast;—intemperance, to broken 
down fences, which permit beasts to enter and consume the earnings of 
industry, and beggar the offspring of the owner;—litigation, to the thorns 
and thistles, which rob the soil of its fertility, and mar the beauty of the 
landscape While, on the other hand, the faithful application of know¬ 
ledge to the useful purposes of life, may be likened to the draining and 
manuring, which give fertility to the soil; the good habits which we es¬ 
tablish, to the good culture bestowed by the husbandman—indicative 
alike of cheerfulness and plenty;—and the embellishments pf the mind in 
literature, science and taste, to the gardens and grounds, abounding in all 
that is grateful to the senses, which should surround and adorn our rural 
dwellings, and beautify the country. 
You have chosen an employment which is honorable, profitable and in¬ 
dependent. Devote to it your best powers, till you have become master 
of the art, or of such branches of it as you design to follow—and until 
you have acquired so much of the science—a knowledge of the why and 
the wherefore—of the great laws of nature, upon which good husbandry 
is based, as shall enable you to conduct your operations with judgment and 
success. “ Who aims at excellence, will be above mediocrity; who aims 
at mediocrity, will fall short of it.” So the adage teaches, and so is the 
response of experience. . . , ,, , 
And finally, fellow-citizens, may you all be wise—all be useful—that 
you may all be happy—here and hereafter. 
EXPERIMENTS. 
Our highly respected friend. Judge Bradley of Onondaga, has instituted 
a series of experiments, during the last summer, to determine the effects 
of steeps at different temperatures, upon seed grain and pulse, &c. and 
has published the results in the Genesee Farmer. We give an abstract. 
1. Oats were dropped into a pail of strong brine. They all floated. A 
like' parcel dropped into water not saturated with salt, sunk. Conclu¬ 
sion—oats may be easily and safely separated from spring wheat by 
throwing the grain into strong brine. 
■2. A parcel of chess wa3 thrown into brine, and a part of it sunk 
Conclusion—chess cannot be separated from wheat in this way. 
3 & 4. Twenty kernels of wheat were put in strong brine fifteen mi¬ 
nutes—eighteen of them grew. Twenty kernels were steeped in like 
manner twenty-four hours, and seventeen of them grew. Conclusion— 
seed wheat may be steeped twenty-four hours in strong brine without 
impairing the vegetating power, ' * 1 
6 to 8 were experiments made in steeping peas in scalding water from 
one to three minutes, which did not seem to impair their vitality. 
9 & 10. Scalding water poured upon seed corn did impair its vitality. 
In one experiment trie water was turned off immediately, in the other it 
was left upon the grain one minute. The grain mostly came up, but 
tardily, and-the plants had a sickly appearance. Conclusion—seed corn 
should not be saturated with scalding water. As the object of steeping this 
seed is to saturate the grain, and induce early germination, yvater of a 
tepid or warm temperature, would seem to be preferable to that which is 
very hot. 
12. Twenty kernels of wheat were put into boiling water one minute, 
and none of them Came up. 
13. Twenty kernels of badly blasted wheat were planted, and nearly 
all of them came up. 
The best test of good farming is this—that every successive crop is bet¬ 
ter than- the one which preceded it, and'that the profits of the farm labor 
are annually increasing. A farmer who can realize these prospects is 
doing well. His land and his purse are improving. And he should never 
hazard this certainty, and the comforts which it confers, for wild experi¬ 
ments, or hazardous speculation. 
But whenever, on the contrary, the crops are annually diminishing, the 
reward of labor is necessarily diminishing also; and it may be pretty ge¬ 
nerally inferred that both the soil and the purse are under the exhausting 
system. • 
A Tennessee Fanner —“ My farm,” says Jacob Hughes, in a letter to 
the editor of the Tennessee Farmer, “contains between eighteen and 
nineteen hundred acres. I cultivate about two hundred acres in.corn; 
about twenty in meadow; about one hundred in wheat and rye, and the 
balance is in pasture. I work ten hands. My farm is what we call here 
a grazing farm. I buy, graze and feed about three hundred cattle annu¬ 
ally; raise and sell about two hundred hogs. My profits on cattle, hogs 
and other articles sold off my farm in 1835, were $9,945, and in 1836, 
$10,475.” 
The Buckeye Ploughboy, is the title of a new agricultural journal just 
commenced at Cayahoga Falls, Ohio, by Richard Fry. It is published 
monthly in numbers of sixteen pages 8vo. at fifty cents a year. 
The Family Newspaper and Domestic Monitor , is the name of a 
weekly paper, to be published in this city, at three dollars per ann. under 
the editorial direction of Solomon Southwick, Esq. We have no 
doubt but this paper will be one of great usefulness to the family circle; 
and that the circulation of family and agricultural papers is calculated to 
effect a salutary influence upon the industry and morals of the country. 
Subscriptions to the Family Newspaper are received by Alfred South- 
wick, the intended publisher, at the Elm Tree Press, corner of State and 
North Pearl-streets, Albany. 
To Correspondents. —We intend, at the commencement of our next 
volume, to comply with the request of “A subscriber,” whose favor is 
post marked Hudson, and to explain fully what we mean by the new 
system of husbandry. 
Obituary.— Died, recently at Boston, Thomas G. Fessenden, 
for fifteen years editor of the New-England Farmer; and recently, in 
Tennessee, Judge Emmerson, editor of the Tennessee Farmer. Both 
of these journals will be continued under the management of competent 
conductors. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE GRAIN WORM. 
J. Buhl Esq.—Sir— The first that I knew of this insect doing any 
considerable damage was in 1S33, and the extent of damage that year I 
cannot ascertain. I had a field of about five acres of summer fallow wheat 
that was materially injured; and there were other fields in the vicinity 
which were said to be injured likewise. The insect was called the wea- 
vel. Since that year I have not seen nor heard of its ravages till this year. 
I have heard of its ravages in the southern part of this county, to what ex¬ 
tent I know not. I did not discover the worm in my wheat until harvest, 
when I found the grain light, and on the suggestion of a man in the field, 
I looked and found the^cause. Many heads were wholly destroyed, and 
the worm had lei!: while other ears contained worms, some more and 
some less; and on threshing some of the wheat soon after housing, there 
were worms among the wheat, until disturbed by the flail, continuing 
their depredations; but they soon disappeared. As to the character of 
the worm, in its several transmigrations, it appears different from most 
insects that inhabit the air. Those worms that feed on vegetables and peo¬ 
ple the air in their, perfect or insect state, deposite their eggs late in sum¬ 
mer or autumn, and they appear in the worm state in the spring, and 
commence their depredations early in the spring or summer: but this 
worm does not appear until the wheat begins to form in the ear; the fly 
is supposed to make its appearance about the last of June. From these 
