secretions. Breeding ewes may be kept in too it the evergreens mentioned above, and they will high condition to bring a healthy and vigorous be found to leave the best timothy or clover, and lamb. The error is usually on the other side. feed on the pine and hemlock leaves. Turnips, Sheep that are kept up in close winter quarters

for five months,not being permitted to roam in the beets, or carrots chopt, and fed to sheep, tend to fields, greatly feel the need of succulent food. keep them strong and in a healthy condition, and Beets, carrots, turnips and bran, or mill-feed, are there is nothing lost to the farmer in feeding these fine substitutes for winter pasture. and occasionally a few beans or a little corn. They If these hints shall aid any one in swelling yield more wool, and larger and stronger lambs, the increase of the American flocks, which have

been on a stand-still for eight years-owing in under such treatment, and afford more profit than part to the vast numbers that are annually conif scantily fed. sumed by this meat-eating nation—our object will be attained. S. B. ROCKWELL.

-Wool Grower.

THE FOREST TREES.
BY ELIZA COOK.

Up with your heads, ye sylvan lords,
Wave proudly in the breeze,

For our cradle bands and coffin boards
Must come from the forest trees.

We bless ye for your summer shade,

When our weak limbs toil and tire;
Our thanks are due for your winter aid,
When we pile the bright log fire.

O, where would be our rule on the sea,
And the fame of the sailor band,
Were it not for the oak and cloud-crowned pine
That sprung on the quiet land?

When the ribs and masts of the good ship live,
And weather the gale with ease,

Take his glass from the tar who will not give
A health to the forest trees.

Ye lend to life its earliest joy,

And wait on its latest page;

In the circling hoop for the rosy boy,
And the easy chair for age.

The old man totters on his way,

With footsteps short and slow;

For the New England Farmer. PREPARATION AND APPLICATION OF MANURES.

MR. EDITOR:-If there be any one subject that demands the attention of the Massachusetts farmer more than any other, it is, "the preparation and application of manures;" the means whereby the recuperative energies of the soil can be restored. We have no lands on which crops can be grown year after year, without the application of fertilizing ingredients. Animal manures, are the first for this purpose-but their quantity is so limited under ordinary circumstances, as to furnish only a small part of the needed supply. With the best economy in the preservation of the materials found in or under the stable of the cattle, or in the pen of the swine, it will not be practicable to make more than one-third part, as much manure as is needed upon the farm. How shall the other two-thirds be supplied? This is the question. For those lands situate on the borders of the ocean, as are many farms in the counties of Essex, Plymouth and Barnstable, the best resource is the material thrown upon the beach,and on the rocks along the shores; where these materials can be had, there need be no want of manures. Another rich and valuable supply is found in the muscle beds, and on the flats along the shore. For many purposes, the very best of fertilizing materials may thus be obtained. Hundreds and thousands of loads of mud and muscle bed are gathered every year,in the county of Essex, and spread by means of railroad conveyances in all the towns between the Merrimac and the sea. I have myself procured a supply of muscle bed, to be sent to Andover, to an intelligent cultivator of vegetables there-who was much These animals are not unfrequently affected with procuring it; as will every man, who has a young pleased with the article-and found his benefit in colds and coughs during the winter season, attend- orchard of apple trees, that he wishes to keep in ed with mucous discharges, or a running at the thrifty bearing condition. No better application nose. The best and most effectual remedy with can be made when properly applied, and on ground which we are acquainted, are the spines and properly managed. I have again and again seen boughs of the white and yellow pine and hemlock, dence. But the source of fertilizing material to be its benefits; and therefore speak of it with confiand common tar. The latter should be rubbed over relied on more than all others, is the bogs and their noses, which may be easily and effectually swamps every where to be found. Here are the rich accomplished by spreading it on a board, and materials gathered for centuries, washed from the sprinkling salt over it. The animals will devour the adjoining hills, waiting to be restored to their origtar with the salt, and not with so much care as to richness of the soil remains on these hills; one inal position. The wonder is, that so much of the prevent their noses from becoming pretty well would suppose it would all have been washed into smeared with it. Careful attention and liberal keep the valleys. Still, there is found, on steep decliviwill strengthen sheep, and greatly assist them in bearing up against this disease.

But without the stick for his help and stay,
Not a yard's length could he go.
The hazel twig in the stripling's hand
Hath magic power to please;
And the trusty staff and slender wand
Are plucked from the forest trees.

COLDS IN SHEEP.

After sheep have been kept on dry fodder several weeks, they highly relish green or succulen, food. If they are confined to the yard, scatter over

ties,much of fertility. How to gather and how to compost the materials found in the swamps and meadows,should be the grand study of the farmer.

Here let it be remarked, all mud is not alikesome needs to be managed in one way, some in an other; some can be beneficially applied to the up

land, in the state in which it is first dug-and good economically to consume the keep his fields procrops are the consequence. Other parcels will be duce, and no more.

benefited by being exposed and frozen, and thus He should select the best animals to propagate pulverized. Every kind of mud can be advantageously deposited in the barn-yard, the barn-cellar from, and dispose of the poorest. "Breeding-inand in the pig-pen, and these mingled with an and-in" should be cautiously avoided, and the equal quantity of other material-whereby the greatest care taken to prevent deterioration by quantity of manure on the farm will be doubled. the introduction of inferior animals, whether naOf late much is said about the concentrated es- tive or foreign. sence of manures, such as the phosphates, guano, poudrette and the advantages to accrue from the CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. analyses of soil, whereby the deficiencies and superabundancies, in the constituents of soils, can This is a capital book-reprinted from the Engbe distinctly pointed out. Without doubt, by the lish by DANFORTH, HAWLEY & Co., of Buffalo. It aid of chemical science, many improvements may has an American Introduction and Notes, by LEWIS be made. But our farmers generally are not chem- F. ALLEN, of Buffalo, N. Y., a gentleman of great ists, nor may we expect them to be; and however clearly these things may be demonstrated, the agricultural experience, and one of our best wrigreater part of cultivation will still go on, as here- ters on the subject. The work describes the protofore, especially while the doctors themselves cess of draining and reclaiming some of the wet, disagree so much in their prescriptions, and the clay lands in England. This is done in such a mode of their operation. One will tell you that an lively and attractive style that to read it will afford ounce of a certain phosphate, applied to a square a treat to the scholar as well as the farmer and rod of land, is sufficient to ensure a full crop of

to know.

wheat upon the land;--and without such applica- the general reader: The American Editor says: tions no wheat can be grown; and this fact he "The clear, vigorous, racy style in which its will assure you, can be made certain, by a careful thoughts are clothed will attract the man of taste, analysis of the soil. This may be so-but I have while the sound and practical truths which are little confidence in such prescriptions. I believe set forth will arrest the attention of all who feel it will be found like many of the highly sublima- an interest in their several subjects. They describe ted notions relating to certain phosphates, put the process by which the most forbidding surfaces forth, with much assurance by those who profess of swamp and bog land, (leaving out the wide fenlands, like those of Lincoln and Cambridgeshires,) These pompous assurances bring to mind an an- by a moderate outlay of capital, may be turned ecdote that occurred many years since, while my into productive fields, teaming with agricultural grandfather and his neighbor Marble were trav- wealth-a labor of the past century, in which the elling in the county of Merrimac, N. H., where a landholders and farmers of England and Scotland farmer was planting his corn, on a pine plain, have been engaged, and in the results of which without any manure. My grandfather said to him, their agricultural products have been quadrupled, "My friend! how much corn do you expect to get their population trebled, and now enjoying more to the acre, in the manner you are cultivating it?" of the comforts and the luxuries of life than at any He replied, "With the blessing of God, we may get former period." ten or fifteen bushels to the acre." His rough companion by his side made answer, "Give me a good shovel-full of dung in the hill, this is the best blessing I want." Now sir, give me a good shovel "Your experience and mine will differ very full of dung properly applied to each hill of corn, much if you do not find more expense, and more and I will value it more with the blessing of God regret, left behind invariably by an under-done than all the phosphates prepared by all the chem- than by an over-done job. The first expense is the least' in agriculture-and in every thing else perhaps, with the old exceptions of Law and Matrimony."

ists in creation.

December 15th, 1853.

TOO MUCH STOCK.

J. W. P.

Below are a few extracts:

FINISH THOROUGHLY WHERE YOU BEGIN.

OPPOSITION TO PROGRESS.

We should never keep more stock on our farms "No sooner had the persecuting infidelity of man than we have the means of keeping well. One (the same in every age) begun to crucify his great animal properly cared for, and liberally tended, theory of THE NUTRITION OF PLANTS FROM THE ATis worth more than two poorly kept. It is a manures began to give it proof. MOSPHERE, than the use of Guano and of inorganic • Burn a plant, strange but common error in rural economy, to whether it be an Oak-tree or a stalk of Clover,' appropriate to two, or perhaps three animals, the (for so the assertion of the great Analyst may be food which is barely sufficient to sustain one.-briefly epitomized.) and the trifling ash it leaves This singular error is often adopted by the far-will show you all it ever got from the soil.' But the bulk, the weight, the great mass of its vegemers of an entire town; consequently there is lit-able structure-where is that gone? tle or no good stock to be found, and the profits resulting from stock-keeping and raising are greatly diminished, while the price of keeping of all kinds is, as a necessary and inevitable result, crop, is simply, its Carbon. COMBUSTION just unThe weight, the bulk, the vegetable mass, of a ruinously high. does what GROWTH did and nothing more. Every farmer should keep just sufficient stock combines the Carbon of the plant with the Oxygen

'Into the Air:

And what seemed corporeal hath melted
Like breath into the wind!'

It re

6

of the air, and their union is Carbonic-acid gas: the more important of the two, after all. I was the very substance which the leaves of a plant going to say that in a pretty long and intimate feed upon in the air where it is presented to them experience of a rather curious soil to deal with, in its gaseous form, in which alone they can ab- and to which never did man, horse, or implements, sorbit: they do absorb it; and in their clever deny the epithet stiff,'-I too, like them, have little laboratory, they pick out the carbon and re- had my own dumb reflections, and not the least turn the oxygen; just as our own lungs take up emphatic of these have grown out of the every day the oxygen and return the nitrogen. Multiply the phenomena of mind acting pon mind. You tell two surfaces of an oak-leaf by the number of a man something, to-day, or express an opinion, leaves on the tree, and you will be able to form or assert a fact, about a thing which he has persome idea of the enormous surface, which the haps never noticed or never heard, before; he plant annually presents to the atmosphere to carry smiles, starts, shakes his head, or delivers himself on this work of absorption. in some other way, for the ways are various in which men 'behave' (as the chemists call it)

But the roots-what is their use then? Examine them through a Microscope, and you under the infiltration of a new idea. Whatever will see that, as the Leaves are adapted to inter- the mode may be, one thing you may be sure of, course with AIR, so the roots are adapted to that in the grunt, the smile, the laugh perhaps, in WATER not stagnant water: for the sponge rots fact whatever it may be that meets you, the attiwhich is always saturated, and their myriad fibers tude of mind betokened is that of dissent. I am are each furnished at the end with a sponge, ca- far from complaining of it: some of my best hands pable of rapid expansion and contraction-suited, have given me infinitely the most mental gravetherefore, to a medium in which moisture should ling in this respect. But what I do complain of, be ever on the move, downward by gravitation, or and want to know where to apply for remedy, upward by capillary attraction. This is the true (since the Law tells us that for every Wrong condition of the soil demanded of the mechanical there lies one)-is that these same hard-headed department of husbandry. Pulverize your soil fellows, workmen, neighbors, friends, kind advideeply,' said Jethro Tull, who thought that plants sers, or whatever other relation they may hold— lived upon fine particles of mould and he said six, twelve or eighteen months afterward, coolly rightly, but in so far as he said only half, and thought that was ALL, he thought wrongly.'

FALL MANURING.

come to me, and with all that air of profound. thought that becomes a man of reflective character, down-calving as one may say with something intensely wise, announce to me in new language of their own, the very thing which I at such time suffered a small martyrdom in the vain endeavor

"Decay is only slow combustion: and when you are burying great cart-loads of carbonaceous manure in the soil before winter, you are making a to urge upon them." hot-bed underground, which will raise the temAside from the intrinsic value of the book, as perature of the soil throughout the long reign of Jack Frost, and preserve many a tender seed that a teacher, we regard it as a valuable contribution would otherwise perish and herein lies the chief to the agricultural literature of the country, and and wise application of all carbonaceous or bulky one of those books which will guadually lead the manure. Rightly, then, so far as their know- farmer, some times, away from the dust and toil of ledge went, did our forefathers, who knew nothing of Turnip culture, plow in their long manure his calling to commune with other minds, who before winter: a poor practice at best, we say, to have, perhaps, taken a higher and wider range of put manure in immediate contact with a grain the employment. crop, but not more poor than to apply to a green spring-crop, under the burning sun of June, the

"WHAT THE APPLE MAN SAYS IN 1853."-Mr. N. treasures of the Farm-yard whose spirit is exhaled P. MORRISON, of Somerville, informs us that he has before the body is buried, and whose body is not just received ten dollars and eight cents for one barrotted time enough to afford its remnant of inor-rel and 28 apples of the Hubbardston variety.— ganic food to the crop it is applied to."

FARMING WITHOUT KNOWING HOW.

These apples were sold by the retailer at 50 to 75 cents a dozen. Mr. M. cultivates about eight acres "Why do you think-why does everybody think of land; his fruit crop, this barren year, brought -that he can farm without having learnt how him eight hundred and fifty dollars! For 26 bushthat agriculture (if you like that word best) is an exception to every other human labor or pursuit, els of apples he received sixty dollars. For 136 a contradiction to all Natural Law, and will bring barrels, he received four hundred and eight dollars. a livelihood without study,cost or apprenticeship." For strawberries and raspberries, one hundred dolOPERATION OF "MIND UPON MIND." ars. The balance, to make up the whole sum,

"Among the various experiences which the much $850,00, was for cider apples, sold at 8 to 12 ceuts more social Agriculture of the last twenty years a bushel, and for early windfalls sold in July and has brought, (for a change has come over us in August. Perhaps some of our young men will that particular since) there is none which has come to the conclusion that the market for good struck me more than that part of its philosophy which e insists in the operation of mind upon mind. fruit is not yet overstocked.

That of mind upon matter' is not a very new

subject: we see it every day-and hear of it too,

The value of the articles which have passed

till it is something tiresome just now we are on over the Erie Canal the present year is estimated to a different theme, and a less trodden: mind be $39,626,362-being $5,242,443 more than the upon mind' is our point at present, and perhaps value of the freights last year.

THE WINTER NELIS PEAR. MR. RUSSELL'S ADDRESS. The above fine portrait of the Winter Nelis, We give below several paragaphs from the late was taken from a pear grown in the garden of Mr. Address of GEORGE R. RUSSELL, Esq., before the ANDREW LACKEY, of Marblehead, a gentleman Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association at whose fine taste and zeal in the cultivation of Boston, September 27, 1853. Did our limits alfine fruits is worthy of imitation. Downing low, we should be glad to give the reader the whole address.

says:

EVERY BODY PRETENDS TO WORK.

"The Winter Nelis holds, in our estimation, nearly the same rank among winter pears, that We live in a country where it is very uncomforthe Seckel does among the Autumnal varieties. table to do nothing. Loafing is at a discount, and We consider it unsurpassed in rich, delicious flais the most wearisome of occupations. Carlyle says that "ease is for no man," and if ease means vor, and indispensable to every garden, however idleness, he must have been thinking of us. In small. It is a very hardy and thrifty tree, and bears regular crops of pears, which always ripen well, and in succession. Branches diverging, rather slender, light olive.

the cities of Europe there is a class which passes through life without doing anything useful. Time sufficient numbers to keep one another in countehas sanctioned the profession, and it consists of nance. But here the attempt is a desperate one, It is a Flemish pear, and was originated, above and of such doubtful estimation that the most intwenty years since, by M. Nelis, of Mechlin. veterate lounger feels it necessary to incur the exFruit of medium size, or usually a little below it, pense of a gilt sign, to indicate that he has a roundish-obovate, narrowed-in near the stalk. place of business. It is in vain that he goes round, Skin yellowish-green at maturity, dotted with gray body's way, and is like the truant boy in the stoseeking for sympathy. He feels that he is in every russet, and a good deal covered with russet patch-ry, who invited every animal he met to play with es and streaks, especially on the sunny side. Stalk him, but as all were too busy to attend to him, he an inch and a half long, bent, and planted in a finally concluded that he had better go to school. narrow cavity. Calyx open, with stiff, short divisions, placed in a shallow basin. Flesh yellow- The almost universal desire for accumulation is ish white, fine-grained, buttery and very melting, wisely implanted in our race to urge us to exertion, that we may not desist from labor while there abounding with juice, of a rich, saccharine, aro- is duty before us, but may be stimulated to conmatic flavor. In perfection in December, and tinue on the field of action when no longer goaded keeps till the middle of January." by the spur of necessity. There is honor in the

DESIRE FOR ACCUMULATION.

acquisition and possession of money fairly won and is the land whose children must work to live. The judiciously expended; and when we look around luxury that heralds decay finds no congenial restus and see what has been done among us by the ing place where toil is both necessary and honoraunion of opulence and benevolence, we have rea- ble; and the surest pledge of enduring prosperity son to speak with gratitude and respect of the gen- is found where industry is the ruling influence. erous men who, having once built up a name and Labor is the magic talisman that transmutes our fortune, have left behind them lasting memorials rocks into gold, and sends our rivers to temper the that "the good was not interred with their bones." sun in his own dominions. It converts our barren But it is one thing to amass for the sake of liber- hills to grain fields, covers the wilderness with its ality and humanity, and quite another to grind, foot-prints, and raises factories, and villages, and and haggle, and shave, to feed inordinate avarice cities, with a celerity which seems the result of or to gratify a foolish ostentation, which manifests mere volition rather than the agency of human vanity without taste, and extravagance without el- hands. It has made us what we are; and if we egance, proving that there may be a vulgarity in care for the preservation of our patrimony, and feel riches which cannot be concealed by all their a generous pride in our distinctive character, we agencies and appliances. Overgrown fortunes, must acknowledge and honor it.

THE FARMER.

Some one has truly remarked that "the true

with us while they are evidences both of public prosperity and individual sagacity, are of very temporary influence whether for good or evil. Where entailed estates are happily unknown, the divisions and subdivisions of an inheritance, however large, soon reduce it to inconsiderable frac-farmer is always a philanthropist." Not only does tions; and at the end of a generation or two, the he toil for the provision of his own wants, but in descendants of the rich man must work for their all his efforts, aims and undertakings, he is perdaily bread. Other names arise to go through the petually stimulated by the benevolent desire to same unvaried process, live their little hour, and leave the world better and more happy than he be swept away to be known no more. Such is the found it. Says an elegant author-"We conunfailing doom of wealth; and as time bears up new names and consigns the old ones to oblivion, template Agriculture as subsidiary not only to there is doubtless many a righteous retribution in- abundance, industry, comfort, health, but to good scribed on his revolving circle. morals, and ultimately to religion. We regard the farmer, stript to his employment, and cultivaThe world's history is full of the persecution of ting his lands, as belonging to the first order of great men, who stepped forward in advance of noblemen." In the language of Channing-"Real their age, warning us to look kindly on honest greatness has nothing to do with a man's sphere. purposes, and to judge with charity what we do it does not lay in the magnitude of his outward not comprehend. Let us not ridicule or despise

NOT TO RIDICULE OR DESPISE NEW THINGS.

new things, because they conflict with our obser- agency, but in the extent of the effect which be vation or seem to be impracticable. There is hard-produces."

ly a discovery or invention in art that has not had Every student of history is undoubtedly aware its day of trial and discouragement. Many a man that a very great majority of the distinguished has gone heart-broken to his grave, in whom the men of our Revolution-its war lions and statesfire of genius has burned, unseen and unappreci

Wash

ated, when adverse circumstances, or shrinking men, were from the producing classes. timidity, or cold neglect, or the want of a kind ington, Jefferson, and Stark, were farmers; Frankword, have come like a mountain upon him and lin a printer, and so with hundreds of others that kept his secret buried forever. Prison bars have might be mentioned. been pressed by throbbing brows which would have

redeemed the world. The records of the world are

The following description of the farmer is by

His certain life that never can deceive him

Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth broad beeches in the field recelve him
With coolest shade till noontide heat be spent.
His life is neither lost in boisterous seas,

full of the neglect of merit, and yet nothing has Phineas Fletcher, and will apply to thousands of been told. Perhaps there is scarcely a man living the class. who has not during some portion of his life, known some one who pined unheeded, wanting the genial air and sunshine which never came: Men get misplaced, and do not meet the magnet to draw out the metal within them. Mediocrity writes verses when it should be holding the plow, and the true poet does the drudgery of life, not dreaming why the fire torments him. The flint and steel are cold and cheerless until struck together, and they may never come in contact.

ICE AND GRANITE, CHIEF PRODUCTS OF NEW ENGLAND. Ice and Granite, it is said, are the chief products of New England; and they fitly symbolize the hardy character of her sons. It seems to be a universal law, that in those regions where Nature sparingly gives forth her bounties, and the coy earth reluctantly responds to the attentions of the husbandman, moral worth increases and manly virtues find more room for development. Blessed

Or the vexatious world; or lost in slothful ease, Pleased and full blest he lives when he his God can please.

WINDHAM CO. SOCIETY, VT.-The following gentlemen were recently elected officers of the Windham County Agricultural Society of Vermont, for the ensuing year, viz:—

MARK CRAWFORD, President.
L. G. BLISS,
Vice Presidents.
JOHN TUFTS,

Henry Kellogg, Secretary.

CHAS. K. FIELD, Treasurer.