AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
FOR THE 
UTax-ni, Grarden, and. Honseliold. 
“AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, ASH MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.”~Washington. 
ORAMGE JUDD & CO., 
PUBLISHERS AND PROPRIETORS. 
Office, 245 BROADWAY. 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842. 
Published, also in German at $1.50 a Year. 
( $1.50 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
-] SINGLE NUMBER, 15 CENTS. 
( 4 Copies for $5 ; 10 for $12 ; 20 or more, $leacli. 
Entered according to Act of Congress in December, 1SGT, by Okange Judd & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York. 
VOLUME XXVII. —No, 2. NEW YORK, FEBRUARY, 1868. new SERIES-No. 253, 
The spirited and faithful engraving of a 
southern mule team, with its black driver, and 
the mud-burdened wheels of a winter road, pre¬ 
sents a scene familiar to many of our readers. 
How many hundreds of fine teams were sacri¬ 
ficed to war’s necessities during the years 1861 
to 1865, not even the records in the quarter¬ 
masters’ offices will correctly show. But the 
war fairly introduced the mule to northern agri¬ 
culturists, and now he is more than ever pop¬ 
ular with those who have steady hard teaming 
to do, where four or six mule teams can be con¬ 
veniently handled. Mules have greater endur¬ 
ance than horses if put to hard labor. They 
are not so heavy as large horses, and on this 
account not suitable for heavy city teaming, 
where two powerful horses must do the work 
of four lighter ones, principally on account of 
the necessity of turning in the narrow streets. 
The mule is adapted to farm work and to 
hot weather, though he works well in our cold¬ 
est winters. He is an easy animal to keep, less 
liable to disease than a horse, and, though sub¬ 
ject to the same maladies, seems to be very 
much less injured by them for common service. 
Mule teams have long been, and probably 
ever will be, a prominent feature of the agricul¬ 
ture of the Southern States. The negro driver 
and the mules seem to get along wonderfully 
well; they seldom have fallings out, and the 
brutality common among city teamsters, who 
have the gentler-tempered horse to manage, is 
rarely or never exhibited by the mule drivers. 
We believe it to be a fact that a mule is but 
little if any more stubborn or wilful than a 
horse if subject to the same treatment. Cer¬ 
tainly the ass is the most long suffering of 
brutes, and whatever of spunk the mule has, 
we think comes from the side of his dam. 
