SS I om) 
| and warmth. 
C 
204 
shall merely point out, in a general way, the 
effects of shelter, with the view of inducing all 
classes of landowners and land - cultivators to 
appreciate and promote it; and this we cannot 
better do than in abstracts from a series of able 
papers on the subject, by Mr. Donald Bain of 
Edinburgh, in the Quarterly Journal of Agri- 
culture. 
“Of all things,” says Mr. Bain, “ shelter would 
seem a subject that need only be mentioned to 
recommend itself in a country such as this. In 
regard to the natural body, we admit at once 
the value of this system. In regard to that 
body, indeed, three things in particular are re- 
quired, dryness, warmth, and sufficient food. 
Of these three things, the last, or food, is, of 
course, indispensable to existence; but are not 
dryness and warmth nearly equally so? Nay, 
with dryness and warmth, the individual may 
live and enjoy comfort with even insufficient 
food ; but no extent of food could preserve him 
in health, or even from death, without dryness 
It is so with the earth, and with 
all the fruits of the earth, and all that live upon 
it and them. In countries naturally cold, all 
animals destined to live in them are endowed 
with suitable coverings, excepting man; and he 
borrows from the earth and from other animals, 
_ and in the coldest country surrounds himself with 
_ the temperature necessary to his comfort, or he 
does not prosper. He has only to consider this 
- condition of his own existence, to see at once 
what he ought to do for any plants or animals 
he may find it profitable to rear; unless, indeed, 
we should rather import a climate from other 
countries, as well as corn and cattle. In parti- 
cular instances, we already pay attention to 
shelter, in regard to the plants of the garden 
_ and hothouse, and the animals of the menagerie; 
but as a general principle, and in regard to those 
plants and those animals it is most important 
we should care for, we are most recklessly and 
unphilosophically negligent. Yet this is like 
being wise in trivial matters and neglecting the 
weighty points of the law; we care where we 
are compelled to care,—where without care the 
plant or the animal would die; but to all short 
of this we are indifferent, though policy and 
humanity alike dictate conduct entirely opposite. 
_ If fields of corn or flocks of sheep only occasion- 
ally perish from want of shelter, though, as a 
general matter, they ali but perish, we are con- 
tented ; we put up with the loss as an effect of 
climate instead of an effect of negligence ; we 
endure the loss instead of preventing it, and 
suffer it to be deducted from income when we 
might add it to it. Wedo this from habit and 
heedlessness ; yet it is not one bit wiser than it 
is in the savages of western America to construct 
themselves mounds on the banks of rivers to 
which to run when the floods come, and die from 
famine, so far as they escape the waters, instead 
of embanking the rivers, as the inhabitants of 
SHELTER. 
Holland have done even by the sea. Year after 
year the savages perish, of course, in thousands, 
and have their health destroyed to the extent of 
many thousands more by flood and famine, and 
the pestilence consequence on both; yet they 
are untaught, and being now nearly confined to 
those regions, they will speedily die out, and 
consider it a natural necessity of their situation ; 
whereas we see that there is no natural necessity 
in the case, but that they are merely unteach- 
able. And, year after year, we have crops wasted 
and cattle starved from want of shelter, and 
flocks of sheep buried in snow or carried away 
by every paltry burn, because there are no pro- 
per residences for shepherds to attend them, and 
no food or shelter to which to drive them on the 
coming on of floods or storms. To all this we 
submit, and deduct for such probable casualties 
from the rents agreed to be paid, instead of re- 
moving the casualties ; and landlords know and 
suffer this, though there would be nothing easier 
than to prevent it. Is not this admirable man- 
agement? Passing over the inhumanity to the 
people employed, and the animals thus called 
into existence to be destroyed or starved, is it 
not barbarous in an economical point of view ? 
What should we think of a general who should 
thus suffer his army to be decimated, when by 
proper care he might prevent it ?—of a farmer 
even, who, by neglecting the precautions he has 
agreed to consider necessary, should allow his 
crops to be wasted.by frost, or his horses by want 
of stabling? Yet the want of any degree of 
shelter to crop or stock, that in its results would 
overpay the cost, is just as barbarous as any of 
the cases J have supposed. 
“There is little doubt that, from imperfect 
shelter, there is not only a direct general loss 
from death or non-production, but also a waste 
of food to cattle and of manure for the fields, to 
an amount scarcely to be calculated. We may 
easily be satisfied of this by general reasoning, 
without the test of experiments ; for what is the 
use of shelter? and what are its effects? Its 
use, as vegetable life is concerned, is very various. 
We are all now aware that vegetation derives its 
principal nourishment, not from the earth, but 
from the air,—from the dews that are constantly 
falling from the heavens, and the gases that are 
ever evolving in or rising from the earth, as- 
sisted. of course, by the proper temperature pro- 
duced by the sun and earth. Well, how can a 
blade of corn, or of any crop, imbibe the neces- 
sary nourishment from dew or air, or enjoy a 
healthful existence, or even live, if perpetually 
scourged by petrifying winds? Can we expect 
anything to prosper in such circumstances,— 
having neither food, nor warmth, nor rest? We 
cannot. We see, in consequence, whole fields of 
the most promising crops, in one night or day, 
scourged into dry and withered blades, or smitten 
to blackness from unbearable cold. These crops 
may recover if the malignant influence shall not 
