Patent Adjustable Grain Cradle, THE PRACTICAL SHEPHERD.

KING,.. 183

Red Winged Black Bird and Barn Swallow, by J. P. NORRIS, 190 ment is required-any industrious person can enter the Business

ALBANY, N. Y., JULY, 1864.

UBLISHED BY LUTHER TUCKER & SON, EDITORS AND PROPRIETORS, 395 BROADWAY, ALBANY, N.Y. TERMS-SIXTY CENTS PER YEAR.-Ten copies of THE CULTIVATOR and Ten of the ANNUAL REGISTER OF RURAL AFFAIRS, with one of each free to the Agent, Six Dollars.

THE CULTIVATOR has been published thirty years. A NEW SERIES was commenced in 1858, and the eleven volumes for 1853, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 60, 61, 62 and 63, can be furnished, bound

and postpaid, at $1.00 each-the set of 11 vols. sent per Express

for $8.25.

"THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN," a weekly Agricultural Journal of 16 quarto pages, making two volumes yearly of 416 pages, at $2.50 per year, is issued by the same publishers.

[SERIES.

No. 7.

master or mistress who does not nicely appreciate a servant's labor, can have no good help. If scolding is ever useful, it must be justly applied, and all this is especially true in this republican government of ours, where the servant is as good as his master, if not a little better.

Any one, therefore, who expects to labor, or to employ labor, on a farm, needs practical instruction in all that pertains to good husbandry. As well might he command a ship without being a sailor, as a farm without being himself a farmer.

Besides such merely practical knowledge as is indicated in what has been said, an agricultural college

The Cultivator & Country Gentleman. would differ from other colleges in devoting more time

AN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.

BY JUDGE FRENCH.

to the arts and sciences closely allied to agriculture, and less to classical studies and to abstract mathematics, which occupy nearly or quite half the usual college course.

One of the distinctive features in an agricultural college would be, in general, a course of study of a prac- We are aware of the folly of attempting to define tical rather than a merely theoretical character, or, as the difference between abstract and practical knowexpressed in more accurate terms, applied rather than ledge. Many of our legislators seem to imagine that abstract science. Although we do not hold with Mr.no knowledge is agricultural that has not a pumpkin Squeers, that it is necessary for a boy, in order to or an ear of corn visibly attached to it; that no root, spell window, to first wash a window, yet we do know whether of Latin or Greek, or cube or square, that has that neither riding, nor swimming, nor skating, can not a potato at the end of it, belongs to a farmers' edbe learned by any means without practice. And so it ucation. That ten times five are fifty, is an abstract certainly is with all the processes of husbandry. No proposition, but it really does not become much more man can hold a plow or wield a spade to any purpose practical nor agricultural if we say that five times ten who has not learned to do so by actually handling potatoes are fifty potatoes! We can see that Greek those implements. No man can become a competent and Latin may be omitted entirely from the course, judge, either of the quality or condition of soil, whe- especially in States like Massachusetts, where even ther it is rich or poor, too wet or too dry for any pro- the high school teachers are required by law to teach posed crop, whether it is adapted to one crop or an- Latin, and where in every town of 4,000 inhabitants, other, grass, corn, wheat or roots, without observation the teachers must also be competent to teach Greek in the field. No man can safely go into the market and French. Neither the exclusion nor inclusion of to buy or sell live stock, seeds, manures, or any pro-classical studies necessarily tends to the success or failducts of the farm, without practical familiarity with ure of an agricultural college. It is a question of exall such kinds of property. pediency, depending much on the means of education afforded by other schools.

We may proceed a step farther, and say that no proprietor of a farm can command the respect or the The illustration of science by its application to speattentive services of laboring men, unless they per-cial uses, may well be prominent in one course. Mathceive that he is competent to direct them, and that ematical principles as applied to civil engineering, he knows when work is well or ill done. Many gen-road and bridge building, architecture, hydraulics and tlemen buy farms and attempt to carry them on, and the like, would be thoroughly studied. More attenfail utterly in their utopian schemes, merely because they want this practical knowledge. The owner does not know what a fair day's work is, and complains of a poor fellow, who has delved faithfully for a week, that he has done nothing, and the man at once resolves that he will not again be the victim of hard work and ingratitude both. Outdoor and indoor, a

tion would perhaps be given to book-keeping, drawing, penmanship, and the details and forms of common business affairs, than is usually bestowed elsewhere. Many a scientific and literary man lives and dies without knowing how to make a charge on a day-book or ledger, or even how to fold and direct a letter decently; and half the graduates of our colleges would be

more puzzled to write a note of hand, or a simple re-it if he turns to law, or divinity, or medicine, and ceipt for money, than to project an eclipse. makes his agricultural education a means of pleasant

Dr. Hitchcock, in his plan of organization of an ag-relaxation, or a collateral scientific study? Above all ricultural college, proposes that the president shall be things, let us educate and liberalize the world, and also a professor of rural legislation; and we find in avoid whatever may tend to cramp and narrow either Mr. Flint's report, that in one of the German agricul- body, mind or heart. tural institutes, they have a course of lectures on agricultural law.

Since this article was commenced, the trustees of the Massachusetts Ag. College have decided, subject to the approval of the Governor and Council, to locate their institution at Amherst. The site selected is about one and a half miles from Amherst College, and the farm will comprise about four hundred acres of excellent land.

Although this may at first seem strange, a little reflection may show some such instruction to be a very important part of the course of education. The rights and duties of farmers as to fences, ways, watercourses; the right to flow and to drain as between ad jacent owners; the rights of riparian owners upon The considerations which decided the trustees to sestreams, rivers, ponds and tide-waters, are all fruitful|lect Amherst for their college, are understood to be vasources of strife and litigation. Rights of dower, rious. The town, for natural scenery, in the diversity homestead rights, the law relating to mortgages and of its hills and valleys, in its horizon of broken mounother conveyances, the forms of wills and their pro-tain ranges, the general appearance of fertility, and visions, the rights of widows and children in estates of comfort, and thrift, without luxury, is unsurpassed. deceased persons, the common duties of administra- It is made up and surrounded by a population interestors, executors and guardians, are all subjects of which ted in agriculture, and who know that farming is a an intelligent land-owner ought to have knowledge, good business because they live and thrive by farming. and we are much inclined to the opinion that Dr. It is not too near any large town, and is yet easily acHitchcock's suggestion is worthy of careful considera- cessible by railway. The influence of the existing tion. If mental discipline be a great object of a col- college, in refining and elevating the taste and habits lege course, there is surely no field of study better of the citizens, is readily apparent. adapted to afford it than that of the law, and it has Although nothing like a union or intimate connecthis advantage over the classics, that the knowledge tion between the two colleges is contemplated, yet the acquired by it bears upon the daily business of life. good fellowship which naturally exists between cultiWe often hear the suggestion, that there is great vated neighbors engaged in kindred pursuits, the natdanger that a college education will render agricul- ural sympathy which men of science and letters usutural pursuits distasteful. "Be careful," say our wise ally feel, and the aid which professors in each instituadvisers, "that you do not educate farmers' boys so tion may derive from those in the other, it is believed that they will not be willing to go back to the old will be of great advantage. Upon any conceivable farm." There is much plausibility, but very little plan of organization, both institutions will be able to sense, in this sort of talk. In the first place, an agri-avail themselves, in many instances, of the services of cultural college is not for farmers' boys exclusively, nor the same professors. Chemistry, natural history, for any class exclusively. It is for any boys, be they physiology, and some branches of mathematics, will sons of anybody or nobody, who desire and are qualified for admission into it. We have no schools for lawyers' sons, nor ministers' sons, and we have no intention to compel a young man who graduates at one college to go back to his father's farm, nor to any farm, if he can do better for himself and his country elsewhere. There is no father who desires so to educate his son that he shall go back on to the old, hard, worn-out homestead, unless it is best for the boy and the family that he should. The idea of setting up a college in which we shall systematically cheat boys into the be-apprehension from that source. lief that a hard, rocky New-Hampshire farm is a bet- Amherst College has, in a most disinterested and ter home for himself and his posterity than can be patriotic spirit, freely offered to the new institution found in all the world beside, is preposterous. No, if the use of its cabinets, laboratories, and even its leca boy gets through our college respectably, we trust ture rooms and the services of its professors so long as he will be elevated high enough to look the country may be necessary and mutually convenient, and the over, and if sheep-husbandry in Texas, cattle-raising citizens of the town tender $75,000, to be expended in Illinois, cotton-growing on the Sea Islands, sugar- for buildings. The plan of organization is yet unmamaking in Louisiana, or grape culture in California, is tured. The general idea, perhaps, as to buildings, is, a better business than hoeing corn in Essex County, to erect at the outset one fine central building, which Massachusetts, that he will know it, and go where his shall contain lecture rooms, museums, libraries, chapduty and his interest call him, well qualified for what-el, laboratories, armory, and halls for all necessary ever he may undertake, and if he finds a better home than his father had, the blessing of his parents will not be withheld. And again, if after a course of education such as we can give him, he finds in agriculture no such promise of profit or pleasure as when he entered our college he fondly anticipated, what harm is

be taught alike in both colleges, and their joint funds will be none too large to compensate the labors of such professors, as, in all future time, it may be desirable to attract into this beautiful valley. Fear has been expressed that rivalry and ill feeling might grow up between students of the two institutions. When, however, we consider that three-quarters of the students of Amherst College are sons of farmers, and that probably the like proportion of the Agricultural College will be of the same class, there can be no reasonable

purposes, with, perhaps, temporary dormitories for a portion of the pupils.

If dormitories and boarding houses can be furnished by private enterprise, it will relieve both the labors of the officers and the purse of the treasurer. It is believed, too, that no better provision for morals, man

ners, health or comfort of young men can be devis ed than by placing them in the families of good citizens of a town like Amherst. The neighborhood of such a village as Amherst, is, in this view, of great advantage to the College.

deposited on the outside of the stem, are shown in an interesting manner by cutting a slit lengthwise and loosening the bark of a young tree, and then slipping in a piece of tin-foil between the bark and the wood, carefully replacing the bark by a temporary ligature. The new deposits of wood from the inner bark are now made outside the tin-foil; and by cutting down the tree after the lapse of several years, the annual The farm is generally of rich, good soil, and no ex-rings will show the exact number of years that have periment of this kind ought to be tried upon a farm that is poor; for after all the talking we may do, the tree is judged by its fruits, and so will this experimental farm be judged.

Of the "physical geography" of the farm, a few words only may be said, and those by way of suggestions to those who are in other States, watching as we constantly are, for more light.

A board of trustees who had no more sense than to select a hard barren tract of land for this purpose, would not have half enough sense to raise any crops upon it. The income of the land should by and by help the funds of the treasury, and instead of the farm being an expensive apparatus, it should help to feed those who labor upon it.

elapsed since the operation.

But the puzzle of many is this: If the sap passes upward in the form of nearly pure water, and is manufactured over again in the leaves into the particular kind of wood which forms each different tree, why does the stock retain its identity-why does not the elaborated juice from the pear tree, when it goes down into the quince stock, change this quince to pear-wood? If a bass-wood leaf manufactures the particular kind of wood known as basswood timber, and the leaf of the maple forms maple wood, why does not the leaf of the pear manufacture pear wood all the way down to the tips of the roots?

Investigations of more recent years have answered this question satisfactorily. It has been found that the green or living bark has a similar power of elaboration to that of the leaves, and its proximity to the new and forming wood preserves its perfect identity even to the finest shades of varieties. For example, graft the Yellow Bellflower, with its light colored bark, the Bellflower form new wood, and send it downward on the dark stem of the Northern Spy; the leaves of in the form of liquid wood; the green bark of the Bellflower imparts to it the distinctive character of this variety, and the wood and bark are strictly those the bark of the Northern Spy it is at once changed to of the Bellflower. But as soon as the juice passes to Spy wood, and the distinctness of these sorts will be shown by the light bark of the one and the dark colored of the other. Again, graft on the Bellflower the dark shoots of the Early Joe, and on this again the light colored Sweet Bough. The leaves of the latter will furnish wood for the whole four sorts, but the respective bark of each will maintain its distinct identity. If a bud of each should now accidentally start Northern Spy; the second, the Bellflower; the third, and produce a shoot, the first would be that of the the Early Joe, and the fourth, the Bough. In the same way the bark of the quince on the dwarf pear tree maintains its distinctive character, and the shoots which spring from the base are those of the quince, grafted when smaller than a quill, and have subsenot the pear, although the quince may have been quently become half a foot in diameter.

This farm has great diversity and beauty, in the range of hills at one end, upon which may perhaps be placed the building we have named, in the heavily wooded slope toward the plain, in groves of chestnut, and oak and pine, in copious springs gushing from the hills at an elevation sufficient to carry water over all the farm buildings on the estate; in a stream almost through the centre, which, without flowing land to any injury, may be raised into a pond affording a power for an endless variety of useful and ornamental purposes. In short, it is hard to remember in such a place, that we are but a grave and reverend board of trustees, engaged in the solemn business of founding a college, and have no right to be carried away by emotions of beauty, like a parcel of boys and girls. And after all, who can measure the influence of just such natural beauty, and just such beauty of art and culture as here may surround the student in all his student life. On reflection we will enter on the ledger account soberly, to the credit of the farm, the hills, and the chestnuts, and the pines, and the possible fountains, and the beautiful pond, and the sound of the waterfall, aye, and Mount Tom and Mount Ho lyoke too, keeping watch and ward in the distance. GRAFTS CONTROLLING THE STOCK. It was formerly a general opinion that the graft had complete control over the stock; if, for instance, the pear is worked on the quince, the stock had no power to change the identity of the pear, or even to vary in the slightest degree the character of the particular variety. An orchard of dwarf pears, containing 500 sorts, presents the distinctive character of each of these sorts, however slight the shades of difference, in complete perfection. In reasoning, however, on the principles of vegetable physiology, cultivators became much puz- There is, however, a certain degree of change effectzled. They learned that water enters the roots of a ed by the graft on the stock, which the bark of the tree, and passes upward through the wood in the form latter does not control. This is particularly observaof sap until it reaches the leaves. Here it is spread Set out, for example, three rows, with a hundred apple ble in the character of the ramification of the roots. out in a thin stratum to the light of the sun and to stocks each, taken at random, either similar or dis the action of the air; it here undergoes a great change, similar in their character. Graft the first row with receives important additions of matter, and descends Roxbury Russet, the second with the Bellflower, and in the inner bark and forms successive layers of new the third with the Tallman Sweeting. After growing wood on the outside of the former wood. The stem will be found to be few in number, strong and horny, three or four years, the roots of the Roxbury Russet and branches of the tree thus continue to enlarge an- and to have penetrated deeply into the soil, rendering nually, and the bark must become stretched to accom-them difficult to remove for transplanting. The roots modate itself to this enlargement,-thus producing of the Bellflower, on the contrary, will be small, nuthe longitudinal cracks seen in the bark of older trees, merous, and nearly horizontal, like those of the dwarf as the maple, basswood, and tulip tree; or in the pear, and consequently very easy to dig up; the Tallloosening scales of the buttonwood, the peeling film and strong roots. There are many other examples of man Sweeting will be found to have large, spreading, of the white birch, and the horizontal streaks of the a similar character familiar to every experienced nurcherry, beech, &c. The successive layers of new wood 'seryman.