Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1858-04-30
Aarifnltural.
FRUITS, BIRDS AND FLOWERS.

do not sufficiently appreciate, may be
mentioned the trio which stands at the
head of this article. Fruits constitute
one of our wholesome and most essential
kinds of food. Gould your whole popu-
lation have an abundance of good fruit, al
all periods of life from the cradle to the
grave, we should certainly, as people,
have greater vigor and better health
while we should, in all probability, be
comparatively free from many of the dis
eases which now devastate civilized So
ciety, at all seasons of the year, and &C.
casionally, in all places.
! Were our children plentifully supplied
with good fresh fruit and plain bread, in
lieu of fried meats and larded short-cskes,
we should hear very little of the multitu-
dinous bowel complaints which, in the
warm seasons, sweep the children to their
graves as though they were only born to
die; and still less of the scarlet fevers
and erysipelatous affections which, as
children are now fed. rage among our
infantilo population as though their little
bodies were all unsoundness and corrup-
| ton.
Fruits are scarce and dear allover the
country, and in some places hardly OBJ
tainable on any terms. In our cities they
are the most expensive item in proper
dietary. But they should be the most
abundant and the cheapest of all food
They can be. and will be. whenever our
agriculturalists take the requisite pains
to cultivate them. And they will then
prove the most remunerative product of
the farmer.
One of the leading objections to fruit
culture is the liability of the fruit, and
even the trees, to he damaged, or des-
troyed by insects. Our gardeners and
nursery-men have discovered regiment
of enemies to contend with, in the shape
of some hundreds of bugs, flies, worms,
etc, which delight to prey on their fruits,
flowers, vegetables, plants, shrubs, and
trees. And this is indeed, formidable
obstacle.
But for all this we suspect man has
only to blame his own short-sightedness
or folly or perversty. He has destroyed
the birds, the natural protectors of all
these things. In the admirable arrange
ments of nature, the feathered songsters
are intended to be the most efficient of
the husbandman's auxiliaries. Not only
do they, in the natural order, amuse us
with their gambols, and entertain our
mornings and evenings with the inspirit-
ing music of JOY and sweet songs of love,
but they destroy, by feeding on them, the
very creatures which, otherwise, ravage
our gardens. and orchards, and vine
yards-our meadows and pastures and
groves.
By destroying the birds we destroy
the balances the all-wise Creator has
established in the animal and the vege-
table kingdoms. We have done even
worse than this. We have taught our
little children the wicked sport of killing
birds, thus depraving them, as well as in.
juring those who never did towards US
single deed that was not kind and good.
Our boys and our yonng men have. in
the absence of real game or injurious an
imals, found cruel pastime in the bad
habits of cunning" and they have es-
reemed it a manly enterprise to shoot the
little innocent birds while frolicking in
their roseate bowers or singing merrily
on the tree tops.
Verify, we have our reward. The bugs
destroy our vines. the vermn revel in
our flowers, the worms despoil our fruits,
and the insects prey on the foliage of our
shade trees.
But our folly has not stopped here.
The marshes and the stagnant pools,
which for time are permitted to exist on
various parts of the earth's surface, exhale
poisonous and deadly miasmas. But
wherever it is proper or necessary for
man to spread his domain and build his
habtation, there beneicent nature has
provided the scavengers to gather up the
mlasmatic influence, and transform the
deadly virus into salubrious perfumes and
delightful aromas. The flowers spring
up spontaneously, as it seems to US, in
and around the marshes. The sunAower
opens its beauteous petals, takes from the
atmosphere the pcstilential vapor, ana re-
turns to us its elements recompounded in
the form of vital air The water-lily,
which sometimes covers the whole area
of the shallow lake or turbid pond, and
skirts the borders of our swamps and
pools, absOrbs the mephitic gases, and
renders them innocuous to man. And so
of thousand other beauteous or fragrant
flowers which adorn the landscape and
enliven the wilderness. Yet man has
not permitted the flowers to live.
We say then, in conclusion, to the
husbaudman, cultivate fruits, plants,
flowers, and spare the birds.