The Belmont chronicle, and farmers, mechanics and manufacturers advocate. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1848-1855, 1853-11-18
al Improvement. Z Careful analysis showed a

i cal Improvement. Careful analysis showed
sigma! deficiency of Lime, but a superabun
dance Of Sulphur and other ingredients o
Plaster, OF course, at each successive ap
plication Of Plaster the plants took up th,
Lime only, leaving all the residue to lieiner
in the soil; and SO the old farmer had fo
years been feeding his SOIL at the rate o
twenty to thirty cents per bushe, with tn,
requisite Lime brought from distance in the
form Of Plaster, while there was far bette
Lime burned all around, and for sale in abun
dance at six cents busel! The loss thu.
incurred may have averaged fifty dollars pei
annum--all for want of analysis that might
have cost from ten to twenty dollars. Ant
there are tens of thousands to-day farming
just as blindly as did this old farmer.
Can there be any rational wonder that far
mers seldom grow rich by such BY such farm
ingl How is q wise and judcious economy
Of means to be attained il ignorance and
waste are to reap the rewards properly due
only to intelligence and frugality' IfIwere
to buy paper and other materials used in my
business as carelessly and blindly as this old
farmer bought manures and fertilized his land,
SOuiu hOt " piihb iOi
a single year. Wiser, more prudent, more
intelligent publishers would undersell and
supplant me, and must fail and be driven
into some vocation where ignorance, heed
lessness and unthrift secure the rewards de-
signed by Providence for intelligence, indus
try and economy. i 20 .-
But let me pause at that word Industry. =
"By Industry we thrive" is an old saw, which
is very welt its place; but the truth contain
ed in proverbs is SO curtly expressed that it
often msleads more than it directs. Indus
try is indeed essential to thrift, and farmers,
like other men, often need to be reminded of
it. When note one who is overwhelmed
with "business," which calls him away from
home two or three days in each week, aid
keeps him hanging about the tavern or store
while his boys are at play and his potatoes
crying for the hoe, l know whittier that farm
er is tending, g. can guess about how long he
will have any land to mismanage. And think
that,in the average farmers waste more hours
than mechanics. They have more idle time
not necessarily, but quite commonly so re-
gardcd-through bad weather, severe cold,
too much wet, &C., than falls to the lot ofI
almost any other class; and it is very easy to
allure many of them away to shoot at other
mems turkies when they should be growing
food for their own. But while many waste
precious hours, quite as much through heed
lessness and want Of system as Incidence, i
know another class who slave themselves out
of comfort and out of thought by incessant,
excessive druggery,-who are SO absorbed in
obtaining the means of living that they never
find time to live--who drive through the day
so that their bones ache and their minds are
through the week that they can neither
worship God nor enjoy the society of their
families on the Sabbath. These men will
often tell you they have no time TO read, which
is just as rational as for the captain of
steamship to plead want of time TO con-
suit his compass and chart or keep reckon
ing of his ships progress. No time to read!
do they not find time to plant and sow, to
reap and NOW, and even to eat and sleep! If
they do, then they may find time, if they will,
to learn how to apply their labor to the best
advantage as well as to qualify themselves
by rest anu refrcshment for working at ALL
venture the assertion that there are twenty
thousand farmers in Indiana who would have
been wcalthier as well as more useful, more
respected and happier men this day, il they
had distracted ten hours per week from labor
during all their adult life, and devoted those
hours to reading and thought, in part with a
view to improvement in their own vocation,
but in part also looking 10 higher and nobler
ends than even this. Some men waste the
better part of their lives in dissipation and
idleness; but this does not excuse in others
the waste Of time equally precious in mere
animal effort to heap up goods and comforts
which we must leave behind SO soon and for
ever. ...... ..e
Il read very few old books-I can hardly
find time to master the best new ones; but |
have no doubt that those who do read the
very Oldest treatises on Agriculture which
have survived the ravages of time, will find
Cato, or Seneca, or Columella, or whoever
may be the author in hand, talking to the
farmers of his day very much as our farmers
are now generally talked to, and inculcating
substantially the same truths: "Plow deeper
fertilze more thoroughly, cultivate less land
J ana cultivate IL DeLter -SuCu, nave no uOuut
has been the burden Of Agricultural admoni.
ton and exhortation from the days of Homer
and Moses 1t seems incredible to modern
skepticism that millions Of Hebrews could
have for ages inhabited the narrow and rocky
land Of Judea; and it trouid be hard to be-
lieve, if we were ignorant of the Agrarar
law of Moses, under which, as population in
creased, the inalienable patrmony of eaci
family become smaller and smaller, and the
cultivation of course better and better. Very
few of US are ut all aware of the average
| capacity of an arabic acre, if subjected Il
Thorough scientific culture. Many family
of four or five persens has derived generou'
subsistence for year after year from singl,
acre. The story of farmer who was com
PEELED to sell off halfhis little estate of eight O
ten acres, and was most agreeably surprises
by finding the reward of his labor quite a
large when it was restricted to the remaining
half as when it was bestowed on the whole
was very current in Roman literature tive
i thousand years ago. Why it is that mel
persist in running over much land, instead Q