HENRY WARD BEECHER. (continued 4)

Where it is sown broadcast, it is difficult to get it through the first year. But if sown in drills ten inches apart, and hoed once or twice, it may be cut twice or thrice the first season, and be entirely established before winter.

A light, sandy soil is the best; it should not be put upon heavy and non-friable soils, though it will flourish on even these, when fully established. Ten pounds of seed to the acre is enough, if drilled; fifteen pounds, if sown broadcast.

The only reason, that we can imagine, why this plant should not be extensively cultivated, is, the disrelish which our farmers too often have to any crop requiring much care. To slash along with a plow is all well enough; but to hoe and weed is rather tedious. But these operations are required only during the first part of the first year.

Camphor for Flowers.—Two or three drops of a saturated solution of camphor in alcohol, put into half an ounce of soft water, forms a mixture which will revive flowers that have begun to droop and wilt, and give them freshness for a long time.

THE SCIENCE OF BAD BUTTER.

We once took occasion to give our opinion of the butter which was largely brought to our market. The article was deemed severe; but if they who think so had eaten of the butter they would have regarded that as the more pungent of the two. We have waited a year; and are now prepared more fully to testify against that utter abomination, slanderously called butter, so unrighteously exchanged in our market for good money. Far the most part, the cream is totally depraved at the start, and churning, working, and packing are only the successive steps of an evil education by which bad inclinations are developed into overt wickedness. We determined to keep an eye upon the matter; and now give, from life, the natural history of the butter sold.

Before doing this, we will express an opinion of what is good butter.

Good butter is made of sweet cream, with perfect neatness; is of a high color, perfectly sweet, free from buttermilk, and possesses a fine grass flavor.

Tolerable butter differs from this only in not having a fine flavor. It is devoid of all unpleasant taste, but has not a high relish.

Whatever is less than this is bad butter; the catalogue is long and the descending scale is marked with more varieties than one may imagine.

Variety 1. Butter-milk Butter.—This has not been well worked, and has the taste of fresh buttermilk. It is not very disagreeable to such as love fresh buttermilk; but as it is a flavor not expected in good butter, it is usually disagreeable.

Variety 2. Strong Butter.—This is one step farther along, and the buttermilk is changing and beginning to assert its right to predominate over the butteraceous flavor; yet it may be eaten with some pleasure if done rapidly, accompanied with very good bread.

Variety 3. Frowy or frowsy Butter.—This is a second degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent-minded eaters.

Variety 4. Rancid Butter.—This is the putrescent stage. No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it, an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those who have, will hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by any description.

Variety 5. Bitter Butter.—Bitterness is, for the most part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he will be very apt to have bitter butter.

Variety 6. Musty Butter.—In summer, especially in damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold; Whenever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if the flavor of mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the man who needs to be told it!

Variety 7. Sour-milk Butter.—This is made from milk which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour milk.

Variety 8. Vinegar Butter.—There are some who imagine that all milk should be soured before it is fit to churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The butter strongly retains the flavor thereof.

Variety 9. Cheesy Butter.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to separate and deposit a whey: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor.

Variety 10. Granulated Butter.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it produces butter full of grains, as if there were meal in it.

Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—too salt and unsalted butter. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding.

Variety 12. Lard Butter.—When lard is cheap and abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to combine the two.

Variety 13. Mixed Butter.—When the shrewd housewife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them together, and those who buy, find out that “Union is strength!” Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled.

Variety 14. Compound Butter.—By compound butter we mean that which has received contributions from things animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth, threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds; in short, everything is at one time or another to be found in it, going to produce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty.

Variety 15. Tough Butter.—When butter is worked too long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey, putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, however, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place.

Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced; besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather; butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which Solomon assures us causeth the ointment to stink; besides butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes; besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are several others with which we have formed an acquaintance, but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings with more than mesmeric facility!

And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill-deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood are a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery; mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn into an utterly nauseating abomination.

Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk; give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean yourself; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet, churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus; work it thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working; put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God that you are an honest woman!

CINCINNATI, THE QUEEN CITY.

Whatever may have been the squealing celebrity of Porkopolis, Cincinnati seems destined to merge the glory of that name in the more agreeable title, City of Vineyards. That she is the Queen City none denies. But on account of what single excellence, it might be difficult, for some, to say. A queen of slaughter-pens might he a hearty buxom lass, but, withal, not exactly the personage for which knights (Sancho always excepted) love to break lances. A queen of foundries and stithies, she might be, and not necessarily, on that account, a ruddy brunette; inasmuch as Sir Vulcan was, once before, the husband of Venus—queen of beauty. A blushing queen of strawberry beds would be quite romantic; but yet more appropriate if her jurisdiction were extended over vines and purple clusters and vineyards and orchards. But whether it be pork, or iron, or gardens, or vineyards, or observatories, Cincinnati is acknowledged on all hands to be the Queen City.

Leaving her commercial glories out of view, we think Cincinnati has done more for horticulture than any American city, taking into the account her recent origin and her means. In all other cities horticulture has been the child of wealth and leisure. It has followed commercial or manufacturing prosperity. But in this city, it began with them and kept pace with them; so that one wonders which most to admire, the thrift of industry and skill, or the elegant taste which is so generally evinced in the cultivation of fruit, and shrub and flower.

The first volume of the Transactions of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, is eminently worthy of that enterprising corporation.

The thoughts of several principal friends of horticulture seem much directed to the subject of vine culture, and the manufacture of wine. There are more than eighty-three vineyards in the vicinity of the city containing not far from 400 acres of land! From 114 acres during the season of 1845, more than 23,000 gallons of wine were manufactured, and there was not more than half a crop obtained in that season. The average yield of wine per acre, for five years in succession, is stated to be from 450 to 500 gallons per annum.

Many think the culture of the grape will be the finishing stroke to the temperance enterprise; affording a wholesome beverage from our hills in place of “corn juice” from our bottoms, and beer from our hop and barley fields.

The arguments urged by some with great sincerity, are the often-quoted facts, that the inhabitants of wine-making countries are favorably distinguished for temperance; and that a palatable and wholesome beverage—pure wine—would supersede the use of violent liquors. If we thought that our people would become temperate upon such conditions, we should be glad to see a vineyard on every hillside, and a wine-vat to every farmhouse. But there is no reason to expect any such result. Vineyards in Europe exist among a quiet, comparatively unenterprising peasantry. They have been trained to moderation; necessity has made them temperate in all things—in food, in dress, in expense, and in drink. The popular habits are not so excitable as with us; business runs in quiet streams, and politics are unknown. With us, business is boisterous, pleasure obstreperous, and politics outrageous. Our people are anything but quiet; they are hot, hot in tongue and blood. It is wide enough of the mark to suppose that the same cause existing among two entirely dissimilar people, would, of course, produce the same results. We might as well say that vineyards would make our people eat less meat, less corn and pork, because the residents of wine districts were known to be addicted to a vegetable diet. The probable consequences of abundant cheap wine must be judged, not by what would happen in France, among abstemious peasants, nor on the Rhine, among economical and sober Germans; but by the tastes, habits, and tendencies of our own people. In this land everything tends to excitement. Men live upon a higher key, and live faster and live much more full of exhilaration than the same classes do in foreign lands. Our people drink not for the taste but for the excitement of liquor; and, so that wine, beer, or whisky will bring them up to the right key, the question of wholesomeness is quite unimportant. Our people are free and therefore have a right to live in the violation of natural laws; and a right, constantly exercised, of having fevers on account of surfeitings, and of dying early and by thousands by reasons of gross excesses.

Pleasures and business are esteemed by the volume of blood which they can drive, the pulse they can raise, the heat of excitement which they can produce. So long as affairs are fresh and piquant they are stimulants enough. But in the inequalities and intervals and fatigues of life, something else is required to hold the spirits up to the high level upon which everything proceeds. As soon as a man resorts to alcoholic stimulants to do this, he has embarked upon a course where all experience shows that he will drink deeper and deeper to final downright intemperance.

Some people think that cheap and wholesome beverage for the “masses,” for laboring people, is desirable. While it may be well enough for every gentleman of leisure, it is to be the poor man’s special blessing, saving him from the swill of the brewery and the fire of the still. Facts will stand on the side of the reverse reasoning. If wine is to be harmless at all, it will be with men who are not prone to enterprising heats; but given to the relishful pleasure of sipping just for the delicate flavors, for the aroma, for the fine bouquet of wine—men who need to have their blood up, and kept up, and resort to wine to supply the flagging stimulus of affairs; such men will not drink for the flavor, but for the feeling.

It is for the sake of being roused; it is to be stimulated; it is, in plain language, to have the first exhilarations of drunkenness that laboring men drink, will drink, and have always drank cider, beer, wine, and brandy. The result of affording wine in abundance to such people as ours, will be to prepare them for a stronger drink just as soon as wine, by frequent use, is no longer stimulating enough. Wine will play jackal to brandy for the rich, and to whisky for the poor. We have some facts on hand touching this popular wine-drinking, which, if necessary, we shall employ at another time. Meanwhile, we are glad to see grape-culture spreading for the production of table-grapes; for the manufacture of wine, in so far as a supply of pure wine is needed for medicinal purposes. Further than that, we are opposed to wine-making. And as to cheating whisky out of its authority over “the dear people” by the blandishments of hock and champagne, or redeeming our barley and cornfields from the abominable persecutions of the brew-tub and the still, by the conservative energy or evangelizations of grape juice, we shall believe it when we see it; and we shall just as soon expect to see fire putting out fire and frost melting ice, as one degree of alcoholic stimulus curing a higher one.

To preserve Garden Sticks.—It is desirable when one has prepared good sticks for supporting carnations, roses, dahlias, etc., to preserve them from year to year. The following preparation will make them last a man’s lifetime: When they are freshly made, allow them to become thoroughly dry; then soak them in linseed oil for some time, say two or three days. When taken out let them stand to dry till the oil is perfectly soaked in; then paint with two coats of verdigris paint. No wet can then penetrate.

CARE OF ANIMALS IN WINTER.

The wisest man has said that “the righteous man regardeth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” If any one is at a loss to know the meaning of the latter part, he cannot have made good use of his eyes. Lean cattle, leaner horses, anatomical specimens of cows, half fed, dirty, drenched by every rain, and pierced by every-winter wind, these are an excellent comment on the passage.

It is time for every merciful man to make provision for every dumb animal which is dependent upon him.

Cows should be provided with a comfortable stable at night. No feeding will be a substitute for good shelter. Both the quantity and quality of the milk will depend upon bodily comfort in respect to warmth and nutritious food. Such as are becoming heavy with calf should be specially cared for. Many farmers let their cows shift for themselves as soon as their milk dries away. But the health of the coming calf and the ability of the cow to supply it, and her owner, copiously with milk depend on the condition in which she is kept during the period of gestation.

Cattle should have a good shed provided for them, under which they may be dry and sheltered from winds. It is the curse of western farming that cattle and fodder are so plenty that it is hardly a loss to waste both.

Where the amount of stock is too great for comfortable home-quarters, and they are wintered in a stock field, there should be places of resort for them, so high as to remain dry, well turfed with blue-grass, and sheltered with cheap sheds, or by belts of forest.

Sheep should receive special attention. They abhor wet. They should be permitted to keep their fleece dry, and to eat their food in a dry stable. The flock should be sorted. The bucks and wethers by themselves, the ewes by themselves; lambs and weak sheep in another division; and a fourth compartment should never be wanting for the sick, where they may be nursed and medically treated.

Horses are more apt to be taken care of than cattle. But even they are often more indebted for existence to a stubborn tenacity of life, than to the care of their keepers. The horse is a more dainty feeder than ruminating animals. He should be supplied with a better article of hay: his grain should never be dirty or musty.

Hardy farm-horses may even rough out the winter without blanketing or any other care than is necessary to supply good food and enough of it. But carriage horses, and those highly prized for the saddle—aristocratic horses—should be more carefully groomed. It is not wise to blanket a horse at all, unless it can be always done. If he is liable to change hands; to be off on journeys under circumstances in which he cannot be blanketed at night, it will be better not to begin it.

Winter is a good time to kill off spirited horses. They are easily run down by a smashing sleigh-ride pace. Boys and girls, buzzing in a double sleigh like a hive of bees, think that the horses enjoy themselves, at the exhilarating pace of six or eight miles an hour, as much as they do. But this is not ordinarily the worst of it. The horse stands out, after a trip of ten or fifteen miles, at a post for an hour or two until thoroughly chilled; then home he races, and goes into the stable, steaming with sweat, to stand without blankets all night. Horses catch cold as much as men do. And a horse-cold is just as bad as a human cold. As there has been some difficulty, in the construction of fanning mills, to gain a strong enough current of wind, we would advise the builders of them to study the construction of a good stable.

WINTER NIGHTS FOR READING.

As the winter is a season of comparative leisure, it is the time for farmers to study. It is a good time for them to make themselves acquainted with the nature of soils, of manures, of vegetable organization—or structural botany. Farmers are liable to rely wholly upon their own experience, and to despise science. Book-men are apt to rely on scientific theories, and nothing upon practice. If these two tendencies would only court and marry each other, what a hopeful family would they rear! How nice it would look to see in the papers:

Married.—By Philosophical Wisdom, Esq., Mr. Practical Experience, to Miss Sober Science. [We will stand godfather to all the children.]

FEATHERS.

The quality of feathers depends on their strength, elasticity and cleanness; and these, again, depend upon the condition of the bird, its health, food, and the time of plucking its feathers. Down is the term applied to under-feathers—most abundant in water fowl, and in those especially which live in cold latitudes, being designed to protect them from wet and cold. The eider-down, from the eider-duck, is of the most repute. It is brought from extreme northern latitudes, and is used for coverings to beds, rather than for beds themselves, as, by being slept upon, it loses its elasticity.

Poultry feathers, as those of turkeys, ducks, and chickens, if assorted and the coarse ones rejected, afford very good beds; but they are not so elastic as geese-feathers.

Everybody knows that live geese-feathers are the best. Every one does not think of the reason; which, as it is the key to the art of having good feathers, we shall propound.

So long as a bird is alive, the feathers are as much an object of nutrition as the flesh, the bones, or any other part of the body.

When dead, put them into hot water to make the feathers come easy. In pulling, take out large handfuls at a time, so as to have scraps of meat and shreds of skin adhere to the quill; let them lie for several days in wet heaps to ferment a little. Then dry them suddenly by violent heat, cram them into the bed-tick, and jump on, and if you have not an odorous bed, and, in a month or two, a bedful of visitors seeking food, then there is no truth in the laws of nature.

The care of beds is not understood, often, by even good housewives. When a bed is freshly made it often smells strong. Constant airing, will, if the feathers are good, and only new, remove the scent.

A bed in constant use should be invariably beaten and shaken up daily, to enable the feathers to retain their elasticity.

It should lie after it is shaken up, for two or three hours a day, in a well ventilated room. The human body is constantly giving off a perspiration; and at night more than usual, from the relaxed condition of the skin. The bed will become foul from this cause if not well aired. If the bed is in a room which cannot be spared for such a length of time, it should be put out to air two full days in the week.

In airing beds, the sun should never shine directly upon them. It is air, not heat, that they need. We have seen beds lying on a roof where the direct and reflected rays of the sun had full power, and the feathers, without doubt, were stewing, and the oil in the quill becoming rancid; so that the bed smells worse after its roasting than before. Always air beds in the shade, and, if possible, in cool and windy days. And now, if any of our attentive housewife-readers, and we have not a few, are disposed to reward us for all this advice, let them give us a bed to sleep on, when we next visit them, made of growing feathers, from live and healthy geese, carefully picked, well cured, daily shaken up and thoroughly aired; and if we do not dream that the owner is an angel, it will be because we are too much occupied in sound sleeping.

NAIL UP YOUR BUGS.

“The words of the wise are as goads and as nails fastened by masters of assemblies.”—Solomon.

After a great pother about canker worms, peach-tree worms, and other audacious robber-worms; after smoke, salt, tar, and tansy, bands of wool, cups of oil, lime, ashes, and surgery have been set forth as remedies, to the confusion of those who have tried them bootlessly, it now appears that we are about to nail the rascals. The Boston Cultivator, contains an article “On Destroying Insects on Trees,” from which we quote:

“I did not intend to give it publicity until I had fully tested it, but as the ravages are very extensive in the West, I cannot delay giving you the experiment, hoping that some of your western readers may now give it a fair trial and report the result. I will give one case which may induce the experiment wherever the evil is felt. In conversation with a friend in Newburyport, Dr. Watson, last fall. I mentioned the experiment; he invited me to his garden, where last year a fruit-tree was infested with the nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors’ trees; he showed me a board nailed for convenience of a clothes-line upon one of the large limbs of the tree; he said he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any scientific mind.

“Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal over a few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight, size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia, which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of life, via Tomb. I think if the ladies should drive some small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of caterpillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the result will pay for the nails.”

Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start for the orchard; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail, and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with a nail, and the “ammonia evolved” will finish his functions!

The Southern Planter is out with a backer to the Boston Cultivator:

“A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke, of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neighbor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of the worm, with the exception of three, and these three were probably the most thrifty and flourishing peach-trees he ever saw. The only cause of their superiority known to his host, was an experiment made in consequence of observing that those parts of worm-eaten timber into which nails had been driven, were generally sound; when his trees were about a year old he had selected three of them and driven a tenpenny nail through the body, as near the ground as possible; whilst the balance of his orchard has gradually failed, and finally yielded entirely to the ravages of the worms, these three trees, selected at random, treated precisely in the same manner, with the exception of the nailing, had always been vigorous and healthy, furnishing him at that very period with the greatest profusion of the most luscious fruit. It is supposed that the salts of iron afforded by the nail are offensive to the worm, whilst they are harmless, or perhaps even beneficial to the tree.”

We do not wish to interrupt any experiments which the enterprising may choose to make. To be sure we regard the facts with some incredulity, and the chemical explanations with something of the mirthful superadded to unbelief. But if nails are an antidote to worms—a real vermifuge—let them be administered, whatever may be the explanations; whether they are an electric battery, giving the insects a little domestic, vegetable lightning, or whether they afford “salts of iron” to physic them, or “evolve ammonia” in such potent, pungent strength that vermicular nostrils are unable to endure it!

While one is fairly engaged in a campaign of experiments, we heartily hope that war will be carried to the very territory of ignorance, and we will propound several other important questions of fact and theory, which, if settled, will crown somebody’s brow with laurels.

It is said that hanging a scythe in a plum-tree, or an iron hoop, or horse shoes, will insure a crop of plums. This ought to be investigated.

It is said that pear-trees that are unfruitful, may be made to bear, by digging under them, cutting the tap root, and burying a black cat there. We do not know as it makes any difference as to the sex of the cat, though we should, if trying it, rather prefer the male cat.

Lastly, that we may contribute our mite to the advancement of science, we will state that, in our youth, we were informed, that, if we would go into the wood-house once a day and rub our hands with a chip, without thinking of red fox’s tail, the warts would all go off. We have no doubt that it would have been successful, but every time we tried the experiment, whisk came the red fox’s tail into our head and spoilt the whole affair. But might this not cure warts on trees?

ASHES AND THEIR USE.

Some soils contain already the chemical ingredients which wood ashes supply. If lime be applied to a calcareous soil, it will do no good; there was no want of lime there before; if potash be added to a soil already abounding in it, no effect will be seen in the crops. Ashes contain lime and potash (phosphate of lime and silicate of potash). If a soil is naturally rich in these, the addition of ashes would be useless. Such cases show the true benefits of a really scientific knowledge of soils and manures. Every plant that grows takes out of the soil certain qualities. Wheat, among other things, extracts largely of its potash; Indian corn abstracts but little; potatoes extract phosphate of magnesia, etc. A chemist would say, at once, apply that kind of manure which is rich in the peculiar property extracted by your wheat, corn, or potatoes! What manure is that? Here again science must help. It analyzes manures—gives the farmer the choice among them. The soil being known, the properties required by different crops being known—the farmer applies that manure which contains what the soil lacks. Experiments have seemed to show, that, for purposes of tillage, leached ashes are just as good as the unleached. So that housewives may have all the use of their ashes for soap, and then employ them in the garden. Leached ashes become better by being exposed for some time in the air absorbing from the atmosphere fertilizing qualities (carbonic acid?)

So valuable are ashes regarded in Europe, that they are frequently hauled by farmers from twenty miles’ distance—and on Long Island they bring eight cents a bushel.

The ashes of different kinds of wood are of very unequal value—that of the oak the least, and that of beech the most valuable. The latter wood constitutes two-thirds of the fire-wood of this region, and the ashes are therefore the very best.

A coat of ashes may be laid, in the spring, over the whole garden and spaded in with the barnyard manure.

They may be dug in about gooseberry and currant bushes.

They are excellent about the trunks of fruit-trees, spreading the old each year, and renewing the deposit.

They may be thinly spread over the grass-plat in the dooryard, as they will give vigor and deeper color and strength to the grass.

We have usually added about one shovelful of ashes to every twenty in making a compost for flowers, roses, shrubs, etc.

Ashes are peculiarly good for all kinds of melon, squash, and cucumber vines. This is well known to those who raise watermelons on burnt fields, on old charcoal pits, etc. We have seen statements of cucumbers being planted upon a peck of pure, leached ashes, in a hole in the ground, and thriving with great vigor. The ashes of vines show a great amount of potash; and as wood ashes afford this substance abundantly, its use would seem to be indicated by theory as well as confirmed by experiment.

Lastly, whenever ground is liable to suffer severely from drought, we would advise a liberal use of ashes and salt.

HARD TIMES.

What are called hard times produce very different effects on different individuals. Some are made more industrious, and some more indolent; some grow frugal and careful, others careless and desperate; some never appear so honest as when brought to the pinch, but many men seem honest until they are brought to the trial, and then give way. Hard times are gradually passing away. As a community, are we better or worse off than before? A few particulars may help us to form some judgment.

Fewer goods are bought at the store, and more are manufactured at home; spinning-wheels and looms have renewed their youth—and so have our mothers, who, after a long disuse, may now be seen working as merrily at them, as they used to do when they spun and wove their wedding furnishings—although they have not now any such rosy hope to quicken their aged fingers. Men have been obliged to rely more upon their own ingenuity—for want of money to pay the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shoe-maker, etc. Old clothes, old tools have been made to serve an additional campaign.

The leisure of dull times has been improved extensively in setting out orchards, and we hope this practice will be continued in busy times. No one has, during the pressure, suffered for food, raiment, or shelter. Indeed, it is supposed that not a pound less of sugar, tea and coffee, has been used by the farmers than hitherto. Probably the quantity has increased.

Debts have been gradually contracted or discharged. Men have seen the end of speculations to be sudden disaster—and (of all things on earth) speculation-farming has received its reward. Men contented with small gains—industrious, frugal, and prudent men have suffered almost nothing.

Gypsum.—“Time and practice” have ascertained the circumstances under which gypsum should be applied. As a reason why, after repeated applications, it no longer benefits, Prof. Liebig says, “when we increase the crop of hay in a meadow by means of gypsum, we remove a greater quantity of potash with the hay, than can, under ordinary circumstances, be restored. Hence it happens that, after the lapse of several years, the crops of grass on lands manured with gypsum, diminish, owing to the deficiency of potash.” In such a case, if spent ashes were employed either in connection or alternately with gypsum—potash would be resupplied from the ashes.

ACCLIMATING A PLOW.

The other day we were riding past a large farm, and were much gratified at a device of the owner for the preservation of his tools. A good plow, apparently new in the spring, had been left in one corner of the field, standing in the furrow, just where, four months before, the boy had finished his stint. Probably the timber needed seasoning—it was certainly getting it. Perhaps it was left out for acclimation. May-be the farmer left it there to save time in the hurry of the spring-work, in dragging it from the shed. Perhaps he covered the share to keep it from the elements, and save it from rusting. Or, again, perhaps he is troubled with neighbors that borrow, and had left it where it would be convenient for them. He might, at least, have built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer leaves a plow out a whole season for? It is barely possible that he was an Irishman, and had planted for a spring crop of plows.

After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. We went into that man’s barn; boards were kicked off, partitions were half broken down, racks broken, floor a foot deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted, grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered about—hames in one place, the breeching in another—the lines were used for halters. We went to the house. A shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appropriated it as a roost, and however plain it was once, it was ornamented now, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it be remembered that hen-dung is the best manure for melons, squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke-house, but of all the “fixings” that we ever saw! A Chinese Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes, hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning-wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since the last “smoke,” stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started for the house; the window near the door had twelve lights, two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of rags, one of a pillow, and the rest of glass. Under it stood several cooking pots, and several that were not for cooking. As we were meditating whether to enter, such a squall arose from a quarrelling man and woman, that we awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man who left his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in the county, for all that we know; only, was it not strange that we should have dreamed all this from just seeing a plow left out in the furrow.

SCOUR YOUR PLOWS BRIGHT!

Farmers may be surprised to know that their crops will depend a good deal on the color of the plows! yet so it is. Bright plows are found to produce much better crops than any other. It may be electricity, or magic for aught we know; we merely state the fact, leaving others to account for it. But very much depends upon the manner of doing it, for merely scrubbing it by hand with emery or sand is not the thing—it must be scoured by the soil. It is found that the subsoil scours it better for wheat, than the top soil—for a plow kept bright by very deep plowing affords better wheat than a plow brightened by the surface of the soil. It is the same with corn. In respect to this last crop, if you will keep your plow bright as a mirror until the corn is in the milk, you will find that it will have a wonderful effect. We appeal to every good farmer if he ever knew a rusty plow to be accompanied with good crops? Iron rust on a plow-share is poisonous to corn.

A young farmer of about twenty years of age said to us the other day: “If anybody wants me, he must come to my corn-field; I live there—I am at it all the time—I have harrowed my corn once, plowed five times, and gone over it with the hoe once.” “Yes,” said his old father, who seemed, justly, quite proud of his son—“keep your plows agoing if you want to fetch corn. I never let the ground settle on the top; if it is beaten down by rain, or begins to look a kind of rusty on the surface, I pitch into it, and keep it as mealy as flour. The fact is our farmers raise more corn than they can tend, they can’t go over the corn more than once or twice, and that’ll never do, and I guess I’ll show old Billy R—— that it’s so.”

Some ambitious farmers are pleased to “lay by” the corn very early; but it is not wise; for the grass is always more forward to grow about this season than any other; and the ground will become very foul where corn is too early laid by, and, what is more to the purpose, a great deal of the nourishment of a crop is derived from the air and dew conveyed to the roots. This can be done only when the surface is kept thoroughly open.

PLOW TILL IT IS DRY, AND PLOW TILL IT IS WET.

Speaking of corn, a very intelligent gentleman remarked: “Well, by a five minutes’ talk, I made Mr. —— produce the best crop he ever had on a certain field.” He was looking over the fence where his corn was, at a flat field, upon furrows full of water; as I came by he said: “Well, I shall never get a crop off this piece of land; it’s going just as it always does when I plant here.” I told him of an old man in Indiana, who was a good farmer, to whom I once said when at his house one morning:

“Deafenbaugh, how is it that you always have good corn when no one else gets a half crop?”

“Why,” said he, “when it is wet I plow it till it is dry, and when it is dry I plow it till it is wet.”

The man to whom I told this anecdote, says our informant, tried the practice, and gained a fine crop.

Now the principle is good. Our Dutch friend would not, we suppose, plow a stiff clay in a wet condition, unless, possibly, to strike a channel through the middle between rows. But the gist of the story lies in this—constant cultivation. Stir, stir, STIR the ground.

STIRRING THE SOIL.

Next to deep plowing we should urge the advantage of continually stirring the surface of the soil.

It produces Cleanliness.—Weeds in a growing crop are witnesses which no good farmer can afford to have testifying against him. When seed is sown broad-cast, weeding cannot be performed. In Europe, where labor is cheap and children plenty, acres of wheat and such-like crops are weeded by hand. Our only chance is to clear out every field, to be sown broad-cast, by a thorough previous culture. In all crops which are drilled, or planted in rows, the hoe, or plow, or cultivator, should be kept in lively use through the season. This practice should begin early, that weeds and grass may not get a start, for often, if they do, it is nearly impossible to keep them down, especially if the season is a wet one.

But there are yet some important reasons for constantly stirring the soil among growing crops. No matter how thoroughly the earth was pulverized when the seed was put in, one or two rains will, except in very sandy loam, beat it down compactly. This crust is injurious in preventing the ingress of moisture. But that which is the most material of all is, that it excludes the air. It is well known that the air affords much nourishment to vegetation; but, perhaps, it is not as well known, that it supplies it by the root as well as by the leaf. If any one wishes to try the experiment, and we have done it time and again, let two patches in a garden be treated in all respects alike, except in this—let one be hoed or raked every two or three days and the other not at all, or but once in the season.

The result will satisfy any man better than a paper argument. Indeed, we have found it impossible (in a garden) to perfect some vegetables without constantly stirring the soil.

While these advantages are gained, it is not to be forgotten that, in dry seasons, a thorough pulverization of the surface, will prevent the evaporation of the moisture in the earth and prevent deleterious effects of the drought.

SUBSOIL PLOWING.

One of the great improvements of the age is the adoption in husbandry of the subsoil plow; or, as it is called in England, Deanstonizing system, from Mr. Smith, of Deanstone, who first brought the implement into general notice. They are designed to follow in the furrow of a common plow, and pulverize without bringing up the soil for eight or ten inches deeper. In ordinary soils two yoke of oxen will work it with ease, plowing from an acre to an acre and a quarter a day.

The use of this plow will renovate old bottom-lands, the surface of which has been exhausted by shallow plowing and continual cropping. It brings up from below fresh material, which the atmosphere speedily prepares for crops.

Old fields, a long time in grass, are very much benefited.

Constant plowing at about the same depth will often form a hard under-floor by the action of the plow, through which neither roots nor rain can well penetrate; subsoiling will relieve a field thus conditioned.

Soils lying upon clay or hard compact gravel are opened and remarkably improved by the process. The wet, level, beech-lands would be greatly benefited by deep plowing in the fall of the year, subjecting the earth, to a considerable depth, to the action of the frosts, rains, etc., and giving a downward drain for superfluous moisture.

Although we have incidentally alluded to the benefits of subsoiling, they deserve a separate and individual enumeration.

1. In very deep molds or loams it brings up a supply of soil which has not been exhausted by the roots.

2. In soils whose fertility is dependent upon the constant decomposition of mineral substances, subsoil plowing is advantageous by bringing up the disintegrated particles of rock, and exposing them to a more rapid change by contact with atmospheric agents.

3. Subsoiling guards both against too much and too little moisture in the soil. If there is more water than the soil can absorb, it sinks through the pulverized under-soil. If summer droughts exhaust the moisture of the surface they cannot reach the subsoil, which affords abundant pasture to the roots.

FIRE-BLIGHT AND WINTER KILLING.

These are two entirely different processes. The Fire Blight (of the middle and western States), is a disease of the circulatory system, induced by a freezing of the sap while the tree is in a growing and excitable state. It always must occur before the leaves are shed in the autumn. Winter-killing is of two kinds—resulting from severe cold, and from untimely heat. The loss of tender shrubs, roses, etc., at least, before they are fully established, and of half-hardy fruit-trees, is occasioned by the winter sun shining warmly upon them while frozen, and suddenly thawing them. The point of death is usually near the surface of the ground, where the under-ground bark and upper bark come together. Whole orchards are destroyed in this way; and, if examined, the bark may be found sprung off from the wood. This may occur at any time during the winter.

We are in doubt whether the winter-stored sap exists in a state to be affected by the expansion of the freezing fluids of the tree. If the expansion of congelation did produce the effect, it should have been more general, for there are fluids in every part of the trunk—all congeal or expand—and the bursting of the trunk in one place would not relieve the contiguous portions. We should expect, if this were the cause, that the tree would explode, rather than split. Capt. Bach, when wintering near Great Slave Lake, about 63° north latitude, experienced a cold of 70° below zero. Nor could any fire raise it in the house more than 12° above zero. Mathematical instrument cases, and boxes of seasoned fir, split in pieces by the cold. Could it have been the sap in seasoned fir wood which split them by its expansion in congealing?

We quote a paragraph from Loudon—“The history of frosts furnishes very extraordinary facts. The trees are often scorched and burnt up, as with the most excessive heat, in consequence of the separation of the water from the air, which is therefore very drying. In the great frost in 1683, the trunks of oak, ash, walnut, and other trees, were miserably split and cleft, so that they might be seen through, and the cracks often attended with dreadful noises like the explosion of fire-arms.”

We don’t exactly know whether to take the first part as Loudon’s explanation of the facts in the second.

There can be no doubt that the nature of the summer’s growth, very much determines the power of a tree to resist the severity of winter. When there is but an imperfect ripening in a cold and backward season, the tissues formed will be feeble, and the juices stored in them thin. Now the power to resist cold, among other things, is in proportion to the viscidity of the fluids in a plant.

It is highly desirable that the chemical researches which have revolutionized the art of cultivation, should be pushed into the morbid anatomy of vegetation. A close, exact analysis of all the substances in an injured condition, will save a vast deal of bootless ingenuity and fanciful speculation.

WINTER TALK.

Do not be tempted by fine weather to haul out manure—it will be half wasted by lying in small heaps over the field; to spread it will be worse yet; manure should lie in a stack, as little exposed to the weather as possible.

Look to your fences; see that they are in complete order and leave nothing of this to consume your time in the spring when you will need all your force for other work. It is well to haul all the rails you will need for the year. The timber will last longer cut now. Do not leave rails or sticks of timber lying where you cleave them, on the damp ground, they will decay more in six months there, than in eighteen when properly cared for. Put two rails down and lay the rest across them so as to have a circulation of air beneath. If you have five or ten acres of deadening which you mean to clear up and put to corn, you may as well roll the logs now. Every good farmer should study through the winter to make his spring work as light as possible. Whatever can be done now do not fail to do it; you will have enough to do when spring opens; and perhaps the season may be one which will crowd your work into a week or two. If you have young fruit-trees, or a little home-nursery, look out for rabbits. They usually depredate just after a light fall of snow.

Overhaul all your plows, carts, shovels, hoes, etc., and put everything in complete readiness.

While you are moving about and repairing holes in the fence, putting on a rail here, a stake yonder, a rider in another place, you may inquire of yourself whether your character is not in some need of repairs? Perhaps you are very careless and extravagant—the fence needs rails there; perhaps you are lazy—in that case the fence corners may be said to be full of brambles and weeds, and must be cleared out; perhaps you are a violent, passionate man—you need a stake and rider on that spot. And lastly, perhaps you are not temperate, if so, your fence is all going down and will soon have gaps enough to let in all the hogs of indolence, vice, and crime: and they make a large drove and fatten fast. Now is a good time to plan how to get out of debt. Don’t be ashamed to save in little things, nor to earn small gains: “Many a mickle makes a muckle.” But set it down, to begin with, that no saving is made by cheating yourself out of a good newspaper. No man reads a good paper a year, without saving by it. Suppose you put in your wheat a little better for something you see written by a good farmer and get five bushels more to the acre. One acre pays for a year’s paper. One recipe, a hint which betters any crop, pays for the paper fourfold. Intelligent boys work better, plan better, earn and save better; and reading a good paper makes them intelligent. Besides, suppose you took a good paper a year, and found nothing new during all that time (an incredible supposition!) yet every two weeks it comes to jog your memory about things which you may forget, but ought not to forget. It steps in and asks whether that little store bill is paid? Whether that loan drawing a fatal six, seven or ten per cent (poison! poison! deadly poison!) is being melted down? whether the children are going to school? whether the tools are all right? the fences snug? whether economy, and industry, and sound morals (the best crop one can put in), are flourishing? It will look at your orchard—peep over into your garden, pry into the dairy—nay, into the cupboard and bureau, and even into your pocket. Now, if you are a man willing to learn, it will give you hints enough in a year to pay ten times over for your paper.

“SHUT YOUR MOUTH.”

We heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to another. It was not very bad advice, though given somewhat roughly.

When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks thought of you, you’d shut your mouth.

We have seen many men ruined because they did not know how to shut their mouth when tempted to say “Yes,” to a bad business.

When we see a man standing before the bar just ready to drink, we think, Ah! you fine fellow, if you will not keep your mouth shut before that bar, you will, by and by, find yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight enough.

When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room rings; or tattling from house to house—or scandal-mongering, we think, Ah, you lady, with all your schooling, you never learned to shut your mouth.

SPRING WORK ON THE FARM.

Thoroughly overhaul your tools; let plows be sharpened; repair their stocks if anywhere started or weakened; look after the chains, the swingletrees, the yokes for your oxen, or the harness for your horses. Don’t have any straps to replace, or harness to tie up with tow strings after you get into the fields, and when time is precious. Now is the time to save time, by getting ready. Old rusty buckles will give way the moment the plow strikes a root; stitches which have been longing for some time to fall out and part, will be likely to do it when you have the least time to mend them. Then we shall hear talk; you’ll be cursing the old horse or the old rickety harness, and declaring that your “luck is always on the wrong side;” and you may depend upon it, that it always will be, so long as you are not more careful. Good luck is a wary old fish which nibbles at everybody’s hook, but the shrewd and skillful angler only catches it.

The opening of spring is usually debilitating both to man and beast. Your horses cannot stand hard usage at once; some of them will need physic—all of them should be put to work carefully; increase their task gradually; favor them, and you will get abundantly paid for it before their summer’s work is done.

A good farmer may be known by the way he manages his spring work. Consider how much there is of it. Cows are calving; mares foaling; young heifers for the first time to be broken to milking; all the tools to be got ready; the ground to be broken up and seeded; the orchards to be set; or old ones to be attended to; a garden to be made; and a hundred other things to do. Now here is a chance for good management, and a yet better chance for bad management. There is as much skill in “laying out” a season’s work for the farmer, as there is in “laying out” a frame for a house or barn.

Bethink you of all the mistakes you made last season; if you made any good hits, improve upon them this year. Every farmer should resolve to do all things as well as he did the last year, and some things a great deal better.

While everything is merry, birds singing, bees at work, cattle frisky, and the whole animated world is joyous, do but search and see if, among all beasts, birds, or bugs, you can find one that needs whisky to do its spring or summer work on?

Look again; seeds are sprouting; trees budding; flowers peeping out from warm nooks. Everything grows in spring-time. Youth is spring-time, habits are sprouting, dispositions are putting out their leaves, opinions are forming, prejudices are getting root. Now take at least as good care of your children as you do of your farm. If you don’t want to use the land you let it alone, and weeds grow; but when you wish to improve a piece, you turn the natural weeds under, and sow the right seed, and tend the crop. I have heard good kind of folks object to much “bringing up” of their boys. They guessed the lads would come out about right. You break a colt, and break a steer, and break a heifer, and break a soil, and if you won’t break your children, they will be very likely to break you—heart and pocket.

Fermenting manures should not be hauled or spread until you are ready to plow them under. [If you spread manure on meadows it should be fine, and well rotted, and let ashes be liberally mixed with it.] If you let manure lie a week or ten days exposed in the fields to the air, it will waste one half of “its sweetness on the desert air.” Let the plow follow the cart as fast as possible, and the gases generated by your manure will then be taken up by the soil, and held in store for your grain.

Deep Plowing.—There may be some rare cases where, for special reasons, shallow plowing is advisable. But the standing rule upon the farm should be deep plowing. A good farmer remarked the other day to us, “One of my neighbors who is always talking of deep plowing was at it last summer, and I followed in the furrow, and his depth did not average more than four inches; he did not measure on the land side but on the mold-board side.” The reasons are very strong for deep plowing.

1. When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches of top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all materials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it.

2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for vegetation.

3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils. The roots penetrate the mellow mould to a greater depth, and draw thence moisture when the top is as dry as ashes. Will not some one who is curious in such matters try two acres side by side plowed shallow and deep, respectively, and give us the history of their crop?

Quantity of Seed.—It has been often said that American husbandry was unfavorably peculiar in stinginess of seed-sowing. It is certain that very much greater quantities are employed in Great Britain and on the Continent than with us, and that much greater crops are obtained per acre. In part the crop is owing to a superior cultivation; but those who have carefully studied the subject affirm that, in part, it is attributable to the use of much greater quantities of seed. We give a table showing the average quantity of seed per acre for different grains, in England, Germany, and the United States. The table was formed in that manufactory of so many valuable articles, the Albany Cultivator. It must be remembered that the average crop is not the average of the best farming States, but of the whole United States.

GERMANY. Seed per acre—Product.

Wheat, 2½ bushels. 25 bushels.

Rye, 2 “ 25 “

Barley, 2½ “ 35 “

Oats, 2 to 4 “ 40 “

Millet, 7 quarts. 35 “

Peas, 2½ bushels. 26 “

Corn, 20 quarts. 36 “

Turnips, 30 to 35 tons.

Buckwheat, 1 bushel. 27 bushels.

Clover, 14 pounds.

Flax, 2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed.

Hemp, 2½ to 3 “ 650 pounds.

Potatoes, 5 “ 300 bushels.

ENGLAND. Seed per acre—Product.

Wheat, 2½ to 3½ bu. 28 bushels.

Rye, 2 to 2½ “ 25 “

Barley, 2½ to 4 “ 36 “

Oats, 4 to 7 “ 32 “

Millet,

Peas, 3 to 3½ “ 30 to 40 bu.

Corn,

Turnips, 1 to 2 pints. 30 to 35 tons.

Buckwheat, 1 to 1½ bush. 26 bushels.

Clover, 14 to 18 lbs.

Flax, 2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed.

Hemp, 3 “ 550 pounds.

Potatoes, 8 to 12 “ 250 bushels.

UNITED STATES. Seed per acre—Product.

Wheat, 1 to 1½ bush. 18 bushels.

Rye, 1 to 1½ “ 15 “

Barley, 1½ to 2 “ 25 “

Oats, 2 to 3 “ 35 “

Millet,

Peas, 2 to 2½ “ 25 “

Corn, 20 to 30 qts. 30 “

Turnips, 1 to 2 lbs. 20 tons.

Buckwheat, 16 to 20 qts.. 15 to 30 bu.

Clover, 5 to 10 lbs.

Flax, 1 to 1½ bush. 8 to 12 bush.

Hemp, 1½ to 2½ “ 500 pounds.

Potatoes, 8 to 20 “ 175 bushels.

SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN.

When spring comes, everybody begins to think of the garden. A little of the experience of one who has learned some by making many mistakes will do you no harm.

Too much Work laid out.—When the winter lets us out, and we are exhilarated with fresh air, singing birds, bland weather, and newly-springing vegetation, our ambition is apt to lay out too much work. We began with an acre, in garden; we could not afford to hire help except for a few days; and we were ambitious to do things as they ought to be done. By reference to a Garden Journal (every man should keep one), we find that we planted in 1840, sixteen kinds of peas; seventeen kinds of beans; seven kinds of corn; six kinds of squash; eight kinds of cabbage; seven kinds of lettuce; eight sorts of cucumber, and seven of turnips—seventy-six varieties of only eight vegetables! Besides, we had fruit-trees to transplant in spring—flowers to nurture, and all the etceteras of a large garden. Although we worked faithfully, early and late, through the whole season, the weeds beat us fairly; and every day or two some lazy loon, who had not turned two spadefuls of earth during the season, would lounge along and look over, and seeing the condition of things, would very quietly say: “Why, I heard so much about your garden—whew! what regiments of weeds you keep. I say, neighbor, do you boil that parsley for greens?” It nettled us, and we sweat at the hoe and spade all the harder, but in vain; for we had laid out more than could be well done. Nobody asked how much we had done—they looked only at what we had not done. To be sure so many sorts were planted only to test their qualities; but the laying out of so large a work in spring is not wise. A HALF well done is better than a WHOLE half done. Remember there is a July as well as an April; and lay out in April as you can hold out in July and August. We have profited by our own mistakes and have no objections that others should do it.

Vegetable Garden.—Before you meddle with the garden, do two things: first inspect your seeds, assort them, rejecting the shrunk, the mildewed, the sprouted, and, generally, the discolored. Buy early, such as you need to purchase. Do not wait till the minute of planting before you get your seeds. Second, make up your mind beforehand just what you mean to do in your garden for the season.

Preparation.—Haul your manure and stack it in a corner; do not spread it till the day that you are ready to turn it under; cut your pea-brush and put it under shelter; inspect your bean-poles and procure such as are necessary to replace the rotten or broken ones; inspect every panel of the garden fence; one rail lost, may ruin, in a night, two months’ labor, and more temper and grace than you can afford to spare in a whole year. Clean up all the stubble, haulm, straw, leaves, refuse brush, sticks and rubbish of every sort, and cast it out, or burn it and distribute the ashes. If you intend to do your work in the best manner, see that you have the sorts of manure that you may need through the season: ashes, fine old barn-yard manure, green long manure, leaf-mold from the wood, top-soil from pastures, etc., etc. Every florist understands the use of these.

Coarse manure may be put upon your pie-plant bed, as a strong and succulent leaf-stalk is desirable. Let it be thoroughly forked, gently near the stools and deeply between the rows.

With an iron-toothed rake go over your old strawberry beds that are matted together, and rake them severely. Strawberries that have been kept in hills and cleanly tended should be manured between the rows and gently spaded or forked.

Early Sowings.—Tomatoes, egg-plant, early cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflowers, broccoli, lettuce, melons, celery for an early crop, should have been, before this, well advanced in a hot-bed. If not, no time is to be lost; and if a first sowing is well along, a second sowing should be made.

You cannot get too early into the ground after the frost is out and the wet a little dried, onions for seed or a crop, lettuce, radishes, peas, spinage, parsnip, early cabbage, and small salads.

Asparagus.—The beds should be attended to; remove all weeds and old stalks; give a liberal quantity of salt to the bed—if you have old brine, or can get fish brine at the stores, that is better than dry salt. Asparagus is a marine plant, growing upon sandy beaches along the sea coast, and is therefore benefited by salt, to which, in its habitat, it was accustomed. Put about three or four inches of old, thoroughly rotted manure upon the bed; fork it in gently, so as not to wound the crowns of the plant. Directions for forming beds belong to a later period in the season.

Onions.—Should be sown or set early.

If you prefer seed, sow, across beds four feet wide, in drills eight inches apart; young gardeners are apt to begrudge room—give it freely to everything, and it will repay you; when they come up, thin out to one for every inch; as you wish young and tender onions for your table, draw these, leaving, at least, one every five inches in the row. If your soil is deep and very rich, onions can be grown in one season from the seed as well as from the set—we try it almost every year and never fail, although told a hundred times: “You could do that in the old States, but it won’t do out here.” It had to do, and did do, and always will do, where there is no lazy men about; but nothing ever does well in a slack and lazy man’s garden; plants have an inveterate prejudice against such, and won’t grow; but he is a darling favorite among weeds.

The white or silver skin, and the yellow Portugal have been favorite kinds with us to raise from seed. They are tender, mild flavored, but do not keep as well as the Red. Strong onions always keep better than mild ones.

If you prefer top-onion sets, or sets of any other kind, plant them out at the same distances, viz. eight inches between the row and five or six between the sets. Inexperienced gardeners are afraid that little sets no bigger than a pea, will not do well. It is a mistake—they will make large onions; put them all in, if they are sound. Plant the sets so that the top shall just appear above the surface.

If you plant out old onions for seed, let them be at least a foot apart and stake them when they begin to blossom. If you plant the top-onion for sets you need not stake them, for they cannot shed out their seed if they fall over. It is not generally known that the same onions may be kept for seed for many years.

Transplanting.—All fruit-trees, most kinds of shade trees, shrubs, hardy roses, honeysuckles, pinks, lilacs, peonies, etc., may be raised, divided, and transplanted in April unless your soil is very wet. All hardy plants may be safely transplanted just as soon as the ground is dry enough to crumble freely—and not till then. In planting out shrubs, remember that they will grow; if you put them near together, for the sake of present effect, in a year or two they will be crowded. We set at ample distances and fill up the spaces with lilies, peonies, phlox, gladiolus, and herbaceous plants which are easily removed.

Flower Garden.—Remove the covering from your bulb beds; as soon as the earth is dry enough to crumble, with a small hoe carefully mellow the earth between the rows of bulbs, and work it loose with your hands, in the row itself. Leave the surface convex, that superfluous rain may flow off. Transplant roses that are to be moved. Divide the roots of such lilies, peonies, irises, etc., as are propagated by division, and replant.

As fast as the soil allows, spade up your borders, and flower compartments, giving first a good coating of very fine, old, pulverized manure.

If you have hot-beds you may bring forward most of your annuals, so as to turn them out into the open beds as soon as frosts cease.

But defer sowing in the open air until the first of April; and then, sparingly; sow again the middle of April, and on the first of May. Only thus, will you be sure of a supply. If you gain more than you need by three sowings, should all succeed, you have friends and neighbors enough, if you are a reasonably decent man, who will be glad to receive the surplus.

Manure.—Corn and potatoes will bear green and unfermented manure. But all ordinary garden vegetables require thoroughly rotted manure. If the soil is sandy, leached ashes may be applied with great profit at the rate of seventy or eighty bushels the acre. The soil is made more retentive of moisture, and valuable ingredients are secured to it. Salt may be used with great advantage on all garden soils, but especially upon light and sandy ones. Thus treated, soils will resist summer droughts and be moist when otherwise they would suffer. Salt has also a good effect in destroying vermin, and it adds very valuable chemical ingredients to the soil. Soapsuds should be carefully saved and poured about currants, gooseberries and fruit-trees. Charcoal, pulverized, is excellent, as it absorbs ammonia from the atmosphere, or from any body containing it, and yields it to the plants. Let a barrel be set near the house filled with powdered charcoal. Empty into it all the chamber-ley. The ammonia will be taken up by the charcoal, and the barrel will be without any offensive smell. But as soon as the charcoal is saturated, it will begin to give out the peculiar odor of urine. Let the charcoal then be mixed with about five times its bulk of fresh earth and well worked together, and it will afford a very powerful manure for vegetables and flowers. In Europe, where manure is precious, it is estimated that the excrementitious matter, slops, suds, scraps, etc., of a family, will supply one acre, for each member, with manure.[3] There are few families whose offal would not afford abundant material for enriching the garden, and with substances peculiarly fitted for flowers, fruits, and esculent roots.

FALL WORK IN THE GARDEN.

Planting seeds may be performed for very early spring use. Lettuce, spinage, and radishes, may be sown in a sheltered spot, and they will come forward ten days or a fortnight earlier than those which shall have been sown, in spring.

Clearing up the garden should be thoroughly performed. Let pea-brush be removed, bean poles and flower stakes be collected and put under shelter. Collect all refuse vines, haulm, stems and stalks and wheel them to a corner to rot, or to be ready for use in covering flower-beds. Let the alleys be hoed out for the last time, and it will be as good as one hoeing in the spring, when they will probably be too wet to hoe. Gravel may now be laid in the walks; if ashes are to be spread, it may be done in autumn, and save time in the spring.

All tender plants are to be removed or secured by covering.

The best covering to secure the earth from frost, that we know of, is a layer of leaves, say three inches thick when well packed down, and upon them two or three inches of chip dirt, with the coarsest part on top. We have had the soil unfrozen in severe winters when so covered. In this manner, tuberoses, gladiolus, dahlias, tiger flowers, etc., may be kept out through the winter. The gladiolus thus treated makes splendid tufts of blossoms. It may be prudent to try only a few at first, and adventure more as experience gives confidence.

Celery which is to be left in the trenches should first be well covered with straw, and then boards should be placed upon the top in such a manner as to shed the rain. Great quantities of wet rot it when it is not growing; and freezing and thawing in the light destroys it.

If portions of the garden have been infested with cutworms, etc., let it be spaded and thrown up loosely just before freezing weather. A clay soil will be ameliorated by frosts, if treated in the same way. A light, loose soil, should not be worked in the fall.

GUARDING CHERRY-TREES FROM COLD.

This tree is peculiarly liable while young, but more especially when coming into bearing, to be roughly handled by our winters. The bark at the surface of the ground splits, and often the trunk, enfeebling the tree and sometimes destroying it. The evil does not result from the cold, but from the action of bright suns upon the frozen trunk. Let those having valuable young trees, prepare them for winter by giving a cheap covering to the trunks, so that the sun shall not strike them. This may be done by tying about them bass matting, long straw, corn-stalks, or any similar protection.

SHADE-TREES.

We believe that no man ever walked under the magnificent elms upon the Boston Common, or beneath the Lindens in Philadelphia, or through Elm street in New Haven, without conviction of the beauty and utility of shade-trees. Trees not only are objects of beauty—the architecture of Nature—but they promote both health and comfort. Our ardent summers, from June to October, make open, unshaded streets, almost impassable, and reflect heat upon our dwellings from the side-walks and beaten road.

In this country the growth of trees is so rapid, and the supply from our own forests so abundant and convenient that every village and city, and every well-conducted farm should be lined with shade-trees. We will offer a few suggestions upon the kinds to be selected and the manner of setting.

The Locust (Robinia pseudacacia).—This tree is very popular, and is almost the only one at the West set for shade-trees. It has a beautiful form, grows very rapidly, bears a profusion of beautiful and very fragrant blossoms (pendulous racemes of pea-shaped flowers), its foliage is singularly pleasing—the young leaves being of a light pea-green, and growing darker with age, so that in the same tree three or four distinct shades of green may be seen; it grows freely in all soils, and is not infested by any worms; its timber is almost as durable as cedar, and in the West, is not subject to the attacks of the borer, as it is in the East.

On the other hand, the tree becomes unsymmetrical with age, it is brittle, breaking easily at slight wounds, even when they have healed over. It is not a long-lived tree, and requires careful protection from cattle.

We would advise a more sparing use of it. Let every other tree be a Locust, and the alternate maple or elm, oak, tulip, etc. By this method the Locust will afford immediate shade, and when they become unsightly the intervening trees will have grown to a goodly size. The Locust should be transplanted just as the buds are ready to burst; they should be protected by frames as soon as set. Good cases may be made at a trifling expense, by taking strips of inch and a half stuff, three inches wide, and nine or ten feet long, sharpen the lower end, and drive it into the ground four or five inches, and in a box formed about the tree let crosspieces be nailed at the top. Be careful that the tree does not rub upon the case, although the wound will heal over, yet in the first high wind, it will be apt to break off at that point. This tree is rather peculiar in that respect.

The Locust was introduced to Europe by a Frenchman named Robin. From him the genus (Robinia) took its name. There are but four species belonging to it, and they are all indigenous to North America, viz.:

Robinia pseudacacia (common Locust). R. viscosa, confined to the southwestern parts of the Alleghany Mountains, bearing rose-colored blossoms and being even more ornamental than the former; it is equally hardy, and if it could be introduced among us would form a valuable addition. Locusts nowhere appear to a better advantage than when planted in clumps of six or eight on a lawn, and if the R. pseudacacia and R. viscosa were contiguous, blending the pure white and the rose-colored blossoms, the world might be challenged for a finer effect.

The R. hispida (rose-acacia of our gardens) is a highly ornamental shrub, its branches are, like the moss-rose, covered with minute spines, which give it a fine appearance. A fourth species is said to exist in the basin of Red River. The favorable opinion here expressed of the Locust, will remove any impression of prejudice when we say, that they are altogether too much cultivated. Our forests are full of magnificent shade-trees whose claims can never, all things considered, be equalled by the Locust.

Elm (Ulmus Americana), commonly called White Elm. Of the four species of elms indigenous to the United States, but two are particularly worth notice, the White Elm, and Slippery Elm (U. pulva). But the former of these is so incomparably the superior, that it should be selected wherever it can be had. It attains a height of one hundred feet, is very long-lived, grows more and more beautiful with age, its long branches droop over, forming graceful pendulous extremities; and no one who has seen the Boston Mall, or the New Haven elms, or those scattered along the villages of Connecticut, will think that Michaux exaggerated in pronouncing this tree to be the most magnificent vegetable production of the Temperate Zone. It is unquestionably the monarch among shade-trees, as superior to the oak for avenues and streets, as the oak is to it for parks and forests. The great main-street of every village should be lined with White Elms, set at distances of fifty feet, and Locusts between to supply an immediate shade, and to be removed so soon as the slower-growing elm has spread enough to dispense with them.

The Maple.—The following varieties are in our forests, and are beautiful shade-trees for the borders of farms, door-yards, public squares, avenues, streets, etc. The Sugar Maple (Acer saccharinum), White Maple (A. eriocarpum), Red Maple (A. rubrum). This last variety shows beautiful red flowers before its leaves put out in spring, and, like the sugar-maple, brilliant scarlet leaves in autumn. The maple is a beautiful tree of fine form, the leaves of the different varieties are variously shaped and all beautiful, it is free from disease and noxious insects.

Besides these, the ash, oak, tulip, beech and walnut, are all worthy of being transferred to our streets. Shade-trees for door-yards, and public squares, and pleasure-grounds, require a separate notice, as in some material respects they should be differently treated.

We warmly recommend in lining streets, that each alternate tree only be locust.

It is better for effect that each street, or at least continuous portions of each, have one kind of forest tree, so that an avenue of similar trees be formed. In planting grounds, it is well to group trees of different kinds, but in streets an avenue should be of elms, or of oaks, or of sycamores, or of maples, and not all of them mingled together.

A PLEA FOR HEALTH AND FLORICULTURE.

Every one knows to what an extent women are afflicted with nervous disorders, neuralgic affections as they are more softly termed. Is it equally well known that formerly when women partook from childhood, of out-of-door labors, were confined less to heated rooms and exciting studies, they had, comparatively, few disorders of this nature. With the progress of society, fevers increase first, because luxurious eating vitiates the blood; dyspepsia follows next, because the stomach, instead of being a laboratory, is turned into a mere warehouse, into which everything is packed, from the foundation to the roof, by gustatory stevedores. Last of all come neuralgic complaints, springing from the muscular enfeeblement and the nervous excitability of the system.

Late hours at night, and later morning hours, early application to books, a steady training for accomplishments, viz. embroidery, lace-work, painting rice paper, casting wax-flowers so ingeniously that no mortal can tell what is meant, lilies looking like huge goblets, dahlias resembling a battered cabbage; these, together with practisings on the piano, or if something extra is meant, a little tum, tum, tuming, on the harp, and a little ting-tong on the guitar; reading “ladies’ books,” crying over novels, writing in albums, and original correspondence with my ever-adored Matilda Euphrosyne, are the materials, too often, of a fashionable education. While all this refinement is being put on, girls are taught from eight years old, that the chief end of women is to get a beau, and convert him into a husband. Therefore, every action must be on purpose, must have a discreet object in view. Girls must not walk fast, that is not lady-like; nor run, that would be shockingly vulgar; nor scamper over fields, merry and free as the bees or the birds, laughing till the cheeks are rosy, and romping till the blood marches merrily in every vein; for, says prudent mamma, “my dear, do you think Mr. Lack-a-daisy would marry a girl whom he saw acting so unfashionably?” Thus, in every part of education those things are pursued, whose tendency is to excite the brain and nervous system, and for the most part those things are not “refined,” which would develop the muscular system, give a natural fullness to the form, and health and vigor to every organ of it.

The evil does not end upon the victim of fashionable education. Her feebleness, and morbid tastes, and preternatural excitability are transmitted to her children, and to their children. If it were not for the rural habits and health of the vast proportion of our population, trained to hearty labor on the soil, the degeneracy of the race in cities would soon make civilization a curse to the health of mankind.

Now we have not one word to say against “accomplishments” when they are real, and are not purchased at the expense of a girl’s constitution. She may dance like Miriam, paint like Raphael, make wax fruit till the birds come and peck at the cunning imitation; she may play like Orpheus harping after Eurydice (or what will be more to the purpose, like a Eurydice after an Orpheus), she may sing and write poetry to the moon, and to every star in the heavens, and every flower on earth, to zephyrs, to memory, to friendship, and to whatever is imaginable in the spheres, or on the world—if she will, in the midst of these ineffable things, remember the most important facts, that health is a blessing; that God made health to depend upon exercise, and temperate living in all respects; and that the great objects of our existence, in respect to ourselves, is a virtuous and pious character, and in respect to others, the raising and training of a family after such a sort that neither we, nor men, nor God, shall be ashamed of them.

Now we are not quite so enthusiastic as to suppose that floriculture has in it a balm for all these mentioned ills. We are very moderate in our expectations, believing, only, that it may become a very important auxiliary in maintaining health of body and purity of mind.

When once a mind has been touched with zeal in floriculture it seldom forgets its love. If our children were early made little enthusiasts for the garden, when they were old they would not depart from it. A woman’s perception of the beauty of form, of colors, of arrangement, is naturally quicker and truer than man’s. Why should they admire these only in painting, in dress, and in furniture? Can human art equal what God has made, in variety, hue, grace, symmetry, order and delicacy? A beautiful engraving is often admired by those who never look at a natural landscape; ladies become connoisseurs of “artificials,” who live in proximity to real flowers without a spark of enthusiasm for them. We are persuaded that, if parents, instead of regarding a disposition to train flowers as a useless trouble, a waste of time, a pernicious romancing, would inspire the love of it, nurture and direct it, it would save their daughters from false taste, and all love of meretricious ornament. The most enthusiastic lovers of nature catch something of the simplicity and truthfulness of nature.

Now a constant temptation to female vanity—(if it may be supposed for the sake of argument, to exist) is a display of person, of dress, of equipage. In olden times, without entirely hating their beauty, our mothers used to be proud of their spinning, their weaving, their curiously-wrought apparel for bed and board. A pride in what we have done is not, if in due measure, wrong or unwise; and we really think that rivalry among the young in rearing the choicest plants, the most resplendent flowers, would be altogether a wise exchange for a rivalry of lace, and ribbons, and silks. And, even if poor human nature must be forced to allow the privilege of criticising each other something severely, it would be much more amiable to pull roses to pieces, than to pull caps; all the shafts which are now cast at the luckless beauty, might more harmlessly be cast upon the glowing shield of her dahlias or upon the cup of her tulips.

A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and in connection with personal instruction, unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraitened, ardent piety.

KEEPING YOUNG PIGS IN WINTER.

There is both negligence, and mistake, in the way of wintering pigs. I am not talking to those whose manner of keeping stock is, to let stock take care of themselves; but to farmers who mean to be careful. Hogs should be sorted. The little ones will, otherwise, be cheated at the trough, and overlaid and smothered in the sleeping-heap. There should not be too many in one inclosure; especially young pigs should not sleep in crowds; for, although they sleep warmer, they will suffer on that very account. Lying in piles, they get sweaty; the skin is much more sensitive to the cold, and coming out in the morning reaking and smoking, the keen air pierces them. In this way, young pigs die off through the winter by being too warm at night. If you have the land-shark and alligator breed, however, you should crowd these together, for the more they die off the better for the farmer.

SWEET POTATOES.

Although our practice has been more extensive, and is more skillful, in eating sweet potatoes than in raising them, we yet adventure some remarks: No root can live and grow without food from the leaf; if the tops be permitted to root, so much nutriment is subtracted from the tubers as is diverted to these new roots. Those who are best skilled in their cultivation, raise their vines up so as to detach the roots, but do not twist them round the hill; which, by crushing or covering the leaves, would render the vines unhealthy. As to vines of the Cucurbitacæ, their fruit not being under ground, it is not necessary that such an amount of prepared sap should go to the root as if tubers were formed. There is, in such vines, a great liability to disease and injury near the hill. The vines shrink and dry near the base; and however flourishing the running end may otherwise be, it is destroyed. If roots are secured at several points along the vine, we remove the chances of its prematurely dying, without withdrawing any sap necessary for the maturation of its fruit.

MANAGEMENT OF BOTTOM-LANDS.

Almost every kind of soil requires a management of its own. That proper for clays, and that proper for bottom-lands, cannot be interchanged. Bottom lands are usually composed largely of vegetable matter and sand; and are therefore light, and easy to work; yet, as they are now managed, they admit a less variety of crops than the tougher and more unmanageable clay lands.

Bottom-lands for Corn.—Our corn-lands, strictly so called, consist of rich intervales and river bottoms. On these corn is raised year after year, without manuring, fallowing, clover, or any change; but one constant, successive corn, corn, corn. It is supposed that corn may be had for an indefinite period, so far as mere exhaustion of the soil is concerned, if the right course is pursued. Some of the best farmers in this region hog their corn lands. Hogging is turning the hogs in upon the ripe corn, and letting them harvest it in their own way. The saving of labor of gathering the corn and feeding it out is very great. Some single farmers fatten from one to five hundred head of hogs; but if this number were fed by hand and the grain gathered for them it would require a force which would eat up the profits. When the fatting hogs have eaten off the field (temporary fences divide large fields into inclosures of convenient size) they are turned into another, and the stock-hogs for another year, are let in to glean and root for the waste and trampled corn. In this way nothing is lost.

This method takes very little off from the land; for the droppings of the hogs returns a great amount of food for the soil; and the corn stalks being burned or turned under, the land continues in good heart. Land being hogged will be free from cut-worms; for the continual rooting of the stock-hogs, which continues until the ground freezes, throws up the eggs or insect to be destroyed by the winter. This method of cultivation is peculiarly suited to large farms, where extensive tracts of ground are kept under the plow.

But in the course of eight or ten years, this process renders the soil extremely light. The action of frost upon it, after the hogs have snout-plowed it, leaves it in the spring as light and dry as an ash-heap. The corn will still grow as well, but every high wind will throw it down; the soil has not tenacity enough to hold up its crop. Clovering has been resorted to by some good farmers as a remedy; but without pretending to know certainly, we suspect that clover will not fully answer the object. Clover on hard soils, separates the particles and renders the ground lighter, and adds vegetable matter to its composition. This is not what bottom land needs. It is too light, and rich enough in vegetable matter.

We believe a better course will be found in putting bottom-lands to small grain. To be sure, there are difficulties in the way of this; but good farming is nothing but a compromise of difficulties. If the month of May be cold and backward, wheat will do well and yield freely. But if the spring is forward, May warm and wet, the grain will run rank, break down when the head begins to fill, and, of course, the berry, however plump and well it might have looked in the milk, will, after it falls, for want of nourishment, light, and air, shrink and shrivel. But even in such springs, might not an over rankness be prevented by pasturing the grain; or even mowing it, when, as it sometimes happens, it gets ahead of what cattle are put upon it. But, at the worst, the grain is not lost; for if it lodges, and is spoiled for the sickle, hogs may be turned upon it and they will thrive well.