provided he has tight rooms and good stoves. rally understood to be the cause of the disease We have kept two fires since the first of No-called the Rot, in other potatoes. This disease vember in two large rooms, and have not yet is undoubtedly hastened and continued, if not burnt three cords of wood, and we can assure caused, by using the same kind of root upon you that we like a good comfortable fire. The the same soil-cating the best and planting the farmer should commence on one side of his lot, ordinary potatoes, just as certain diseases in and cut the wood clean as he goes. In this animals are continued, by breeding in and in, manner the young shoots come up alike, and or keeping the same kind of animals, with no they will grow alike as they receive the sun cross of blood; just as you will see idiocy or alike. Now say there are thirty cords of wood insanity promoted in families where relations to an acre, if he cuts ten cords of wood a year, are continually intermarrying-to save power it will take him three years to cut off the wood or property. Most strikingly illustrated in the of a single acre-and it will take him forty-five Bourbon Princes of Europe, and certain wealyears to cut the wood off from his lot of fif- thy families in our own country. As power teen acres. At the end of forty-five years, he and property has increased by intermarriagemay go back to the first acre he cut, and cut quality has deteriorated. So with the potatoe~ thirty cords to an acre. On our ordinary the same kind and the same soil has been used up land, wood will grow to thirty cords to the for its planting, till disease has hold of it. acre in thirty years Now if our farmers will change their system of culture-and instead of planting their potatoes on ground that they have a few years previous used for the same crop-plant them

Thirty-four years since, we recollect of assisting in clearing fourteen acres of wood-land, and getting the same into winter rye. After the crop of winter rye was taken, it was pas-upon new ground, choosing new and the largest tured for a year or two, and then suffered to grow up. The growth was white oak, red oak, yellow oak, chesnut and maple. Seven years since, that same rye field was cut over, and there was not a single acre of it but produced thirty cords to the acre! And this in twenty-seven years!

PASTURE LAND.

Twenty acres of pasture land is enough for an ordinary farmer, and with proper care, will pasture as many cattle as forty and fifty acres will under common usage. The pasture should be divided into three or four lots, and should be cultivated. That is, the lots should be occasionally plowed up, manured, planted, and sowed down with grass. In this way the pasture bears sweet and luxuriant grass. And there is another advantage arising from lotting off a pasture. Cattle when turned into a pasture are uneasy-they will roam over the whole pasture, cropping here a little and there a little-treading and wasting as much as they eat. In a small lot they get over their roaming sooner, and go to eating in earnest, and get their food in season. Trees should be left standing or planted in every pasture, that a cool shade be provided for the cattle in the heat of the day. It is needless to add, that there should be an abundant supply of water.

THE POTATOE.

roots for the planting, they will be most sure to raise a good and profitable crop. We had some as a present a few weeks since, raised by a farmer of this county, in this manner, upon new ground-or rather pasture land that had not been plowed since its clearing many years since. He raised a good old-fashioned crop, and, what is better, he raised a good old-fashioned potatoe-one that reminded us of the potatoes of thirty years since.

COSSET SHEEP.

Most farmers keep a few sheep for the production of wool for domestic purposes, and for the table. Now economy is not enough looked to in this matter. If a man keep sheep at all for this purpose, and does not intend to become a wool grower, he should select a few lambs of good breed-learn them to run with his cows, and keep them well. In a word, make cossets of them. Cosset sheep thus learned, and thus well kept, will be large and stately, and will be great producers of wool. Eight and ten pounds of wool, and even twelve pounds, is no uncommon fleece for a cosset sheep. How much more economy then, there is in keeping five or six sheep, in high condition, that will produce forty or fifty pounds of wool, than there is in keeping a flock of twenty or twenty-five little sheep to produce the same amount of wool! How much less expense in the feeding, and how much less care in the keeping. It is so much of an item of economy that it behooves any farmer to look into it, who would grow wool economically for domestic purposes, or would have an extra quality of mutton for his own table or for the market.

If the farmer will pay attention to the selection of his ground for planting his potatoes, and the kind of potatoe he will plant, he will have no great uncertainty about his crop. The great difficulty as to the potatoe, has been that the farmer has not changed his seed or his grounds, till disease and deterioration has seized upon them as a matter of inheritance. It is not often that the long reds or Mohawks, Jacksons or Chandlers, have been troubled with rot. These, probably from their juicy qualities, are proof against the growth of the fungi upon them, which is now pretty gene-dead.

A fox lately entered a house in England, and seizing an infant which lay asleep in its cradle, dragged it by the throat to the fields. When pursued, it dropped its unusual prey, and made off, but the child was picked up quite

THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR.

ROTATION IN CROPS.

one crop remain as nourishment for another.
Thus if the turnip be first in order of succes-
sion, this crop manured with recent dung, im-
mediately finds sufficient soluble matter for its
nourishment, and the heat produced by fer-
mentation assists the germination of the seed,
and the growth of the plant. If after turnips,
barley with grass seed be sown, then the land
soluble parts of the decomposing manure to
little exhausted by the turnip crop, affords the
the grain. The grasses-rye-grass and clover

ROTATION in crops is one of the principal features in the management of the successful farmer. A pure virgin soil will produce any kind of a crop for a few years, but at length it ceases to be productive; it refuses to yield as before; it becomes "worn out," as the term is, for lands becoming barren under cultivation. Lands in a few years will so deterioate as to refuse the growth of the most common vegetables. Fields well sown down to grasses— clover and herdsgrass-in a few years, will1emain, which derive a small part only of hardly produce a spear of those grasses, but their organized matter from the soil, and probwill be overrun with speargrass, whiteweed, ably consume the gypsum in the manure, sorrel-or some other grass for which the land which would be useless to the other crops; claims affinity. So of the garden. Under the these plants, likewise, by their large system of highest state of cultivation, the plots or beds leaves, absorb a considerable quantity of nourwill in a few years refuse their usual yield of ishment from the atmosphere and when produce, and you will often hear the old-ploughed in, at the end of two years, the defashioned farmer say that his garden is Too RICH or that it has become "bound out," or

express his surprise that he raises no cabbages, onions, and other roots-and he is sure it is in the seed or the weather, or in something else, for he has raised them there for years-and yet in the same place, and with the same culture, he has none this year!

Now the plain reason that crops, grasses, and garden vegetables-in fact all vegetables -deterioate in this manner is, "They have exhausted the nourishment in the soil proper for the production of their various kinds." Hence they deterioate or become extinct.

the wheat crop and at this period of the course, cay of their roots and leaves afford manure for the woody fibre of the barn-yard manure, other difficult soluble parts, are broken down, which contains the phosphate of lime, and the and as soon as the most exhausting crop is taken, recent manure is again applied."

This is the reasoning of that eminent chemist, Sir Humphrey Davy, upon rotation in crops, as practiced in England, where the land is in the highest state of cultivation, and in the best heart. First, a crop of turnips with and clover; third, grass; fourth, grass; fifth, green mannre; second, barley with rye-grass the grass is plowed in and wheat, the most exhausting crop, is taken. Then turnips with the green manure follows. With such rotation of crops, the land is kept in the best of heart, and the greatest amount of produce is raised.

We take

Most farmers practice rotation to some extent, dictated by common experience. Thus experience teaches them not to plant potatoes, corn, hemp, wheat or flax continuously upon Here we take a different course. the same ground. And why? Because they our exhausting crops first, and our grass last. exhaust the soil. Well, now what is true of these crops, is true of all others in a greater or We first plant with potatoes or corn, and often less degree. But they do 'nt take experience mix peas with the potatoes, and turnips with as a guide as to other crops. For in certain the corn-and thus forcing it to produce a sections of our county-in fact all over the double crop, sooner exhaust its good properState-you will hear of lands being cropped to ties. We next take off a crop of corn, if the death. Some have been "BUCK-WHEATED to death," and others have been "RYED to death." year previous we have taken potatoes, but if crop it with oats or wheat, or barley-sowing But usually with lands under decent cultiva- we first planted corn, we in the second year tion in other respects, the phrase is, "They it down with clover and herds-grass, or redtop. As likely as not we have taken a crop of potatoes, a crop of corn and a crop of wheat, all exhausting crops-before we sow down to grass, and then after such exhausting cropping, if the clover, herds-grass and red-top dies off, and is followed by white-weed, sorrel, blackberries, strawberries or mullen, we exclaim, "Oh, our land is bound out!!" We are the ones bound out, not the land. We are bound down to the habits and practices of the bad husbandry of our forefathers, without any attempt to break our bonds by the experience of others, or by our own reason and common sense.

are bound out."

Now all this difficulty is for want of rotation of crops. The humblest vegetable production should teach the farmer this fact. The mushroom or toadstool, as it is usually called, never comes up twice in the same place, the nourishment of a day exhausts its appropriate food in the soil-it dies, and none of its kind takes its place. So of all other plants; they exhaust their peculiar nourishment in the soil, and unless this nourishment is replenished in the shape of manure, they will die sooner or later, or greatly deterioate.

Sir Humphrey Davy thus gives the reasons for this requirement of nature. He says upon "Rotation of Crops"-"It is a great advantage in the convertible system of cultivation, that the whole of the manure be employed, and that those parts of it, which are not fitted for

Now the philosophy of Sir Humphrey Davy would suggest the following rotation of crops:

This

First, potatoes with green manure. crop would take up the most soluble parts of

the manure, and the hoeing and digging of the land will become barren, in spite of stable the roots would stir well the turfs, and lead manure. to their complete decomposition. Second, barley or oats with grass-seed-clover and herds-grass. The oats or barley will absorb the most soluble parts of the manure-while the grasses remain to take up the gypsum. The third and fourth, grasses are to be taken, and then on the Fifth, wheat or Indian corn. These are the exhausting crops. After this the land should be manured with the green manure, and planted again with potatoes or an equvalent root. If our farmers should follow some such rotation in cropping their land as this, founded upon philosophy and reason, we are inclined to think we should hear very little of lands being "bound out" or "run out.'

It sometimes happens too, that soil becomes artificially poor, by the addition of too much of the organic or inorganic substances. Thus a farmer may add too much lime, clay, salt or other matter in the shape of manure, and make his soil unproductive and barren. But such things seldom occur and are easily remedied if they do.

SOILS.

Soil or land may be naturally or artificially poor. Soil consists, like vegetables, of two parts, the one organic or combustible, and the other inorganic or incombustible. The organic part of soil is derived from the decomposition of vegetable matter and from the excrements of animals.

The inorganic part of soil is derived immediately from the debris or crumbling of solid rocks and is principally made up of sand clay and lime. Now soil that is naturally poor, or barren, may be so from the want of organic

matter, or from its abundance. Thus a barren sandy plain wants organic substances, while a barren peat or muck swamp has too much organic matter. Again soil may be poor or barren, from the want of one or more inorganic substance or from having one or more of them in too great abundance. Thus the barren pine plain wants clay as well as vegetable matter,

and has too much sand.

been made so by neglect or ignorance. Some Soil that is artificially poor or barren, has poor soil has been made so by continually cropping. The tiller, we won't say farmer, has continually taken a crop from the land, thus depriving it annually of its organic matter, and has not returned to the land an equal quantity of organic matter in the shape of manure.Of course his land has become free of organic matter and "is worn out and barren." It is his own fault. He has treated his land as the spendthrift treats his purse, he has daily taken from it a dime while he has added to it daily but a half dime! No wonder that the one soon sees the bottom of an empty purse, or that the other becomes the thriftless tiller of worn-out land!

Again, soil is often artificially barren, in consequence of taking the same kind of crop continually from it, or a crop that requires the same kind of food for its growth. In this manner the soil becomes exhausted of certain inorganic substances not difficiently supplied by the manure that is applied. Thus a succession of grain crops exhaust the soil in an especial manner, of phosphoric acid, potash and magnesia, -and if they follow each other continually,

WANTS OF SOILS.

The first question to be solved by the enquiring and successful farmer is, what does my soil want to make it productive? The answer depends upon the nature of the soil.Upon our New Hampshire "upland farms there are generally all varieties of soil-gravelly loam, sandy or light, and clay or swamp lands. Of course all requiring different treatment. For that all soils are enriched by the same kind of manure, is as absurd as was the old fashioned medical treatment of calomel and lancet for every kind of disease.

The composition of various soils will be seen by the following tables.

Now let the farmer but compare his soil with the above tables and he cannot fail to see what are the wants of his soils-and he can supply those wants by the application of such manure as affords the lacking substances.

ROTATION OF CROPS.

But a great difficulty with our farmers is the lack of a proper rotation of crops. By continual cropping with the same, or different crops, requiring the same kind of food, as before suggested, their lands become unproduc

tive.

VEGETABLE ANALYSIS.

BY DR. W. GREY.

ALL vegetables and vegetable productions are composed of but very few elementary substances, the principal of which are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, and occasionally, nitrogen. There is sometimes found a portion of lime, potassa, magnesia, soda, silicic acid, &c. but their quantity is very small compared with the three elementary substances first named. Vegetable productions, therefore, do not vary Thus potatoes, corn, wheat, barley, rye and substances of which they are composed, but very materially with regard to the elementary oats, take as food in growing, large quantities of their great variety is owing to different proporpotash, phosphoric acid and magnesia. Now to tions of these elements. The process, by follow these crops one after the other upon the which the relative quantities of these elements same soil, soon impoverishes the land, and no in any given vegetable production are ascergood farmer will practice such husbandry.-tained, is called ultimate vegetable analysis, to Farmer's often practice it however in their gar- distinguish it from that process called proxidens and we hear them say frequently their mate analysis, by which we separate the differbeds are too rich, they have put too much ent compounds contained in vegetables, such manure upon them-when the whole secret as sugar, starch, gum, &c. of their barrenness arose from the fact, that

they had not practiced a proper rotation of
crops, but had planted the same kind of veg-lowing manner.
etable in the same place, until the soil had
ceased to afford its peculiar nourishment, and
had become unproductive.

ANALYSIS OF THE ASH OF GRAINS, &c.
The following tables show the composition
of 100 lbs of the ash of the grains and seeds
most commonly raised in this country.

The amount of carbon contained in any vegetable production is determined in the folthe desired material to be analyzed, with about Mix any given quantity of fifty times its weight of the oxide of copper, and heat it to redness in a glass tube, and collect the gass, thus generated, in a graduated glass receiver over mercury. By this process the oxygen of the copper unites with the carbon of the substance under examination, making carbonic acid. As every twenty-two grains of this acid contain about six grains of carbon and sixteen of oxygen, the amount of carbon can be readily calculated.

To ascertain the quantity of hydrogen, the gaseous products are transmitted through a tube filled with fragments of fused chloride of calcium, previously weighed, which absorbs all the watery vapor. These fragments are again weighed, and the increase in their weight indicates the amount of water generated by the process. Hydrogen and oxygen unite in the proportions of one grain of the former to eight of the latter to form water; consequently one-ninth of the increase in weight is hydrogen.

If the carbonic acid and water generated in these two processes above named, contain more oxygen than is lost in the first process by the oxide of copper, that excess is the amount of oxygen contained in the substance under examination. This is easily determined by adding together eight-ninths of the water and sixteen-twenty-seconds of the carbonic acid, the relative proportions of oxygen contained in water and carbonic acid, and comparing the amount with the loss of weight in the oxide of copper. If the amount of oxygen thus obtained does not exceed that lost by the copper, the inference is that the substance under examination did not contain any oxygen.

If the substance submitted to analysis contain nitrogen, it will pass over in connection with the carbonic acid; and its quantity can

A muck swamp is of more value to the far- be determined by exposing the gaseous mixmer than a mine of gold or silver.

ture to pure potassa which absorbs the entire

I have been thus particular in describing the method of analyzing organic bodies, and the chemical changes which take place during that process, that my readers may be prepared to give credit to whatever may be said hereafter relative to the composition of vegetable productions, without questioning the possibility of obtaining correct results by ultimate analysis.

THE FARMER'S HOME.

BY MOODY CURRIER, ESQ.

amount of carbonic acid, forming carbonate of of poverty has thrown around it. He is alpotassa, leaving the nitrogen free. most tempted to enter and see what sort of It is quite evident that if the amount of el-people dwell therein. If then the hand of ements or compounds obtained by the analysis, toil can spare from its busy hours time to or of both combined, equals in weight the throw around its lowly dwelling objects of substance analized, the analysis must be regar- taste and beauty, what ought competence and ded as correct. wealth to perform? Let beauty and utility go hand in hand; let neatness, taste and order be impressed upon every spot; let the bramble give place to the rose. The beautiful phlox will grow as readily as the catnip and the burdock; the flowering almond is as hardy as the sweet-fern and much more ornamental. Let the peony and tulip supplant the thistle; let the sweet-brier grow instead of the wild-brier. A grape vine hanging over a trellise will afford both shade and fruit; or spread out upon an old wall or heap of stones, will conceal their unsightliness, and in autumn repay your care with an abundance of delicious food. Such THERE is, perhaps, no class of people that care, such expense is not useles as many supcare so little about their dwellings as the pose. Beauty, neatness and order are as valAmerican farmer. Years ago there was some uable as live stock or agricultural produce. excuse for this neglect, when all his time and Their usefulness upon the intellectual and strength were required to subdue the forests, moral feelings is not to be valued by dollars to fence his fields and support his family. and cents. The pleasure that a cultivated man But those times are now past; the forests have receives from objects of beauty is truly a mendisappeared; and we should begin to beautify tal feast, as much above the mere animal comand adorn, as well as to till the earth. No man fort as the human mind is above that of brutes. should occupy more land than he can properly The man who hangs around his dwellings, his cultivate. A large number of acres, with fences, his trellises, a mantle of green, who shabby buildings and brush fences, affords a scatters the earth with flowers, who spreads scanty living and but little profit to many a along the road-side a cooling shade of overman, who takes more pride in the extent of hanging trees, not only furnishes a feast of fat his farm, than in the skillful cultivation of his things to the stranger, but himself, his wife, fields, or the comfort and convenience of his and his children; like'Adam and Eve, dwells in buildings. There are many even whose farms the midst of an earthly paradise, where every bear the impress of neatness and good hus- object is full of beauty, where every scene adbandry, whose fences and orchards betoken ministers delight. Like a fairy dell it seems thrift and industry, whilst the house, the the work of enchantment, but it is the enchantyards, and gardens appear to be the least cared ment which taste and labor bestow. The hand for and most neglected parts of the establish- of man has been busy there, his leisure moment. Now if there is a spot upon the earth ments have been turned to account; the deliwhich we should cherish with the holiest affec-cate fingers of woman have trained the pliant tion, which we should adorn and beautify, which we should render inviting and pleasant, it is home. Many a wretched shed, with broken windows, shattered doors and opening cracks, scarcely protects the owner of a hundred acres from the pitiless blast, whilst his wife and children shiver around him. But such a groveling soul is incapable of any rational enjoyment. Again, many a comfortable dwelling is rendered unsightly and forbidding by heaps of rubbish, piles of wood, sleds, carts and the like, scattered about it. On the other hand, the lowly cot of poverty may be rendered pleasant and even beautiful. by the air of neatness and taste which surrounds it. Every thing is in its place; the woodbine and honeysuckel hang over its windows and doors, concealing beneath their mantling folds its weather-beaten sides. By the path the rose and lilac load the air with their sweetness The elm and the maple, by the road-side, now repay with their shade, the toil that planted them. The passing stranger stops and gazes upon the beauty and neatness which the hand

vines and planted the flowers; children have watered the opening buds and imbibed a taste for the right and the just, the good, the beautiful and true, which will grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength; and, through the whole course of their lives, will yield a harvest of goodness and happiness, of more value than the untold treasures, which the groveling hand of avarice can horde in its useless coffers. The beauty and harmony of the outward, spring up in the inward, and the soul that dwells on nature's charms will never be led to mar the handiwork of the Creator, by its own pollution.

MASSACHUSETTS.-The Legislature of this State was organized on Wednesday, January 7, by the choice of Gen. Henry Wilson, President of the Senate. and N. P. Banks, Speaker of the House.

THE laboring man in the present age, if he does but read, has more helps to wisdom than Solomon had.