The Belmont chronicle, and farmers, mechanics and manufacturers advocate. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1848-1855, 1853-11-18
ST. ClAIRSVTLLE, OHIO, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER Is, 1853.

more rdindJe and more productive az one re
sui Of each year's thiage, docs mol understane
his vocation, and ought 10 learnt or gull ii.
| Perhaps there is there is no single field o
observation wherein the extent and disos
trous effects of ignorance among farmers i.
more strikingly exhibited than in that OF in.
sect life and ravsges. 1t has pleased the
All-Wise to subject Agriculture to the chan.
ces and perils Of Insect depredations, as well
as TO weeds, droutb, frost, inundotion, and
other evils. The end Of all these is benef-
cence-the evolution and discipline Of Mans
capacities through the necessary counterac-
ton and combat. Plants and domestic ami
mails rightfully look to their owner for eff
cient protection: andhe who allows his sheep
to be killed by wolves, his fowls to be car
ried offby foxes, or his grain to be devoured
by insects, is culpably faithless to bis depen-
dants and his duty. Yet how listlessly,
thouahilessly, hopelessly, DO we sec farmers
stand while their crops are destroyed by
worms, birds, or weevil, without seeming, to
know that they have any thing to do in the
premises! No Turkish fatalism is binder or
banker than theirs. 1t is hardly yet six
weeks since saw whole counties Of my own
State covered and devasted by grasshoppers,
who stripped the dry upland of every blade of
gross, almost every green leaf, cutting the
green oats from their stalks, the fruit from
the trees, devouring corn in the ear, making
the cleared land desert, and pushing the
cattle to the very verge of starvation. Yet
there stood the farmers, gazing goomily from
L., 4. H. Joe ,,c tba;r nbor
ished hopes Of a harvest and the utter DESC
lation Of the whole country, yet not one ask
ing of another
"What shall we do to arrest this sweeping
ravage! How shall we most readily, cheap
ly and surely clear our lands of these YER
min!''
do not pretend to know what the proper
remedy was or is; but this | do know, that,
had been one of these farmers, would have
found remedy or bankrupted myself in the
search. I should have first interrogated the
best authorities on Agriculture and Natural
History, and, in case Of finding no guidance
there, should have sowed one acre of my
land bountifuly with Salt; the next with
Plaster; the next perhaps with Nitre; fourth
with Potash and 50 on, using in all cases
substances that knew would be paid for by
future harvests, unless had reason to believe
something else would be more efficient. Thus,
before one week had elapsed, l would have
found some caustic that grasshoppers could
not abide; and having found it, would have
applied it until the last cormorant among
them had been driven into the woods or turn
ed over on his back. And this is the spirit
in which every such invasion should be met
and overcome. Had the farmers of any town
ship promptly met, when the rhvage first be-
came serious, and agreed that one of them
would try one possible cntidete q another an
other, according as they happened respectively
to have the material at command, and meet
few evenings later to compare notes on the
results of their several experiments, they
could not have failed to discover an efficient
remedy within the first week. But they did
nothing; and hence many Of their farms are a
desert, their Fall crops next to nothing, and
half their cattle must be sold or killed for
want of food.
Our farmers generally think and work bet
ter out of their own vocation than in 1t.
distant and towering evil arouses their hos
t.ity and evokes their energy much more
readily than one Of a less imposing but more
character which assails them in
their homes. Let the word go forth, "An
army of invaders have landed" and tens Of
thousands snatch instinctively their muskets
and take the road; but here are armies all
around them who are plundering them worse
than any invaders would, yet hardly attract
their notice. The Hessians who were hired
to subjugate our fathers had no rest until the
last of them was killed, captured or hunted
home, more than seventy years ago; yet their
attendant parasite, the Hessian Fly, has been
plunderng us ever since without resistance,
and is now as formidable and destructive as
ever. [ cannot believe flies more difficult to
conquer than men, e we would but fairly set
about it.
w. And here let me retrace my steps TO
illustrate point in Industrial Economy which
have already incidentally touched, but have
not illustrated as its importance deserves and
as the prevailing misconceptions render me-
cessary. refer to The Proportion Of Means
10 Ends, which the Artisan must always bear
in.mind, but which the Farmer seems too Of
ten to forget No artifcer presu'nes that the
labor and material required for fine table
will suffice for piano-forte; northat steam
engine can be constructed as cheaply as
churn. But the farmer, seeing trees and
plants grow around him with weed-like IA
cility and tenacity, often indolently imagInes
that any tree will grow so, and plants his rare
and delicate fruit-trees, if he plants such at
all, as IL they were oaks or ocusts. But Ma
ture is inexoruble in her requirement that the
labor and care essential to the production of
choice fruit orplant shall be proportionate to
the value of the product. You may grow Pine
on yellow sand or Hickory on blue clay; but
if YOU want choice Pears or Peaches you
mus. devote much labor and expense to pre-
pairing and enrichng the ground wherein
your trees are to be set. Too many farmers,
not needing this law, or suPPosing that Ma
ture may somehow be circumvented, obtain
worthless fruit or none at all, and so abandon
the culture in disgust and despair.
There is not now one grapevine or fruit
tree. except of the coarsest and commonest
kinds, where there should be twenty, taking
one State with another; and one consequence