IMPROVEMENT IN AGRIGULTURE. 149 
ened selfishness is true benevolence, and this would induce us 
to cultivate trees of various kinds. 
Who does not know that a farm, other circumstances bein^ 
equal, with a thrifty orchard, with here and there a beautiful 
grove, where the children can frolic, and where the working 
man can rest, fanned by the waving leaves, during the noontide 
hour, and with scattered trees where the sheep and cattle can 
find shelter when the tempest rages, or the scorching sun op¬ 
presses, would be estimated, by the most rigid utilitarian or 
fancy farmer, as of far greater value than one destitute of those 
things.. In all the older States, in this and other of the nesv 
States, nearly one-half of the improved farms of the country 
are suffering sadly for the want of the very trees the pioneers 
labored so hard to exterminate. Remember the destruction of 
forest trees in some of the European countries has reduced the 
land to sterility from drought. The like is observable in 
places on this continent. 
When the trees are gone the stream dries up, the meadows 
and fields become parched. In their haste to be rich, the far¬ 
mers killed the goose that laid the golden egg. 
Among the many bounties and blessings of Providence which 
human beings do not sufficiently appreciate, are fruits, flowers 
and birds. 
Fruits constitute one of our choicest luxuries as well as one 
of our most wholesome and most essential kinds of food.— 
Could our whole population have an abundance of good fruit, 
at all periods of life, from the cradle to the grave, we should 
certainly, as a people, have greater vigor and better health, 
while we should in all probability be comparatively free from 
many of the diseases which devastate civilized society at all 
seasons of the year, and occasionally in all places. 
Were our children plentifully supplied with good fresh fruit 
and plain bread, in lieu of fried meats and larded short-cakes, 
we should hear very little of the multitudinous bowel complaints 
which, in the warm season, sweeps the children to their graves, 
as though they were only born to die, and still less of the scar- 
