Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1858-06-23
VOL. 4.--N0. 43.
CULTIVATE AND IMPROVE.

I CULTIVATE AND IMPROVE.
| Deterioration in plants and animals rs as pos
| sible as Improvement. Nations, once renown-
ed as the perfection of the human race, by ne.
glect have sunk back to barbarism. Egypt
was once so learned that it is recorded, as q
striking mark of her greatness, that Moses
sswas learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp-
tians.'' Egypt is now semi-barbarous pro-
vince of Turkey, poor that none do her
reverence. The Bedouin robber makes his
haunts where was once the Alexandrian school,
from which has come much of our civilization
and science. Eyre, celebrated in Holy Writ
for her knowledge in the arts and navigation,
has lost her designation as ;sQueen oil the Sea"
and scarcely vestige of her greatness, her
arts, or her power remains.
We might extend our illustrations of the
truth of our position, at the expense of our
pride of human progress, but these will be
sufficient.
The best breed of animals extant, turned in
TO the wilderness. viii soo1 lose their distinc-
tive qualities, and assimilate TO the original
Wild stock. But few generations are required
TO change the Berkshire or China, into the
long -nosed, fiap-eared, wild hog, from which
all our varieties have sprung
So with our fruit. Let the best variety of
apples known, grow up in hedge, or in the
woods, and in short time the descendants
will be no better than bitter crabs.
We may follow this law of deterioration
through the whole vegetable and animal ere
alton, and we shall find it unerring-1rhat is
not progressing is refrograding. Every farmer,
then, may make up his mind that unless, by
his efforts, properly directed, in taxing nature,
he is improving his stock, and other products,
they will deteriorate in his keeping. If We
eat our best and earliest grain, generation af-
ter generation, or sell it because the immedi-
ate profit is greater, the rich wheat kernel will
soon become shrireled concern, as unlike its
ancestors crab is to a pppin.
By cultivation, all our choice varieties Of
apples have been produced from the wild crab
of Asia-by neglect, they will return to that
again. Our best varieties of peaches have
been, by cultivation, produced from fruit Of
Persia, that possessed in its whole mass the
poisonous property that is now in the seed;
and person eating some of the rich, pulpy
varieties of pears, can hardly imagine that it
is descendant of what Pliny described eigh-
teen hundred years ago, when he said, call
pears whatsoever, are but heavy meat, un-
less they be well boiled or baked.''
While such has been the progress forward
of many of the fruits, others have greatly de-
Perforated, or progressed backwards. Not
long since, some wheat kernais were found in
a coffin of one of the Gallo kings, who had
been buried fourteen hundred years. The
wheat, in its botanical character, is identical
with the wheat of the present day and yet on
being planted, 1t produced from sixteen to
twenty stalks to each grain, and had an ever
age OF twenty more grains to a stalk, and each
grain heavier than our common wheat.
This shows that wheat culture has dwarfed
the crop in the last fourteen centuries SO as to
almost make the plant different species and
every years cropping it making it less, and
less likely that We shall keep even the present
deteriorated article good without constant
care and skill in the use of fertilizers, and in
the selection or seed.
The descendants of vegetables, as we'll as
of animals, are the representatives of their an
cestors. If consumption, scrofula, or other
diseases exist in the parent, it will appear in
the children and though it may some times
pass over a single generation, it is sure to ap-
pear in the next 1t is with vegetables:
sow peas, full of bugs, and you will get buggy
peas sow wheat full of weevil aud smut and
you will reap rich crop of weevil and smut;
SOW shriveled and late ripened wheat, and it
will require miracle to produce good crop.
In the retrograding scale, the descendants
are always worse than the present. In the hu-
man race, avarice in the parents makes a thief
of the child-the principle is inherited, but is
more fully developed. So in all animals and
vegetables. The bad traits in the parents are
inherited by the offspring, and more fully de-
veloped. Deterioration thus goes on, in an
accelerated ratio, until we can scarcely trace
4 resemblance to the ancestor.
Let every farmer, then, censcientiously re-
solve never to allow good article to deteri-
orate on his hands; but by taxing the forces
of Nature, to improve whatever is entrusted
to his care. Let him resolve. not only to COM
pei the earth to yield her increase in abun-
dance, but that the abundance shall be improv-
ed in quality.