Chinch Bugs.

and universal growing of spring wheat and barley.

The Chinch Bug first made its appearance in this country in 1783, in the state of North Carolina, (wish it had staid there!) and by 1785, says Klippart, had become so numerous and destructive as to cause the culture of wheat to be abandoned in some districts for four or five years. In 1809 in again became very destructive in the same tate. It made its first appearance in this State

This distinguished harvester is mentioned this year by the press as destroying the crops in a large part of the area of Illinois, as well as most of Wisconsin. In these parts-south-western Wisconsin-the farm ers have been troubled with them for over a dozen years, their numbers and spread growing each year, as a general thing, though some years apparently retrograding. There is no known remedy for them, nor any meth--- crossing over from Illinois-about twelve od of evading their ravages on sp ing wheat. Other crops are not particularly hurt by them. Some years it so happens that either the wheat crop matures out of season for them, or the bug appears at irregular time, in either case the crop escaping. The time of duration of this insect tribe is unknown. It may be some years. We have thought the tribe had about run its race, from various indications, but of this there are no positive signs. It is known that every race of insects in due time begets a cannibal, so to speak, (and perhaps the same is true of all animal species, not excepting the human,) which shall destroy its kind. In this arrangement of the Divine economy is our hope. We think we write the uniform judgment of the farmers of this section by say ing, that when the chinch bug appears in any farm region, then is the time to abandon spring wheat.- Grant County Herald.

REMARKS.-We know of no data from which may be derived the conclusion that the Chinch Bug, whose unprecedented ravages have, this year, well nigh ruined half our crops, has had its day, and will soon disappear, unless it be this, viz: that some other pests of like character have, in times past, flourished for a time, and then unaccountably disappeared. Still, we have no objections to this encouragement of their hope, if it will only make the farmers of the country a little better natured, and will not interfere with the adoption of what, to us, seems to be the only remedy, to wit: the abandonment of wheat and barley growing, for a time-or, at least, as the Herald suggests, the abandonment of the invariable

years ago, but has not been alarmingly destructive until within the past five or six years. This year its ravages have been wide-spread and thorough, not only in the wheat and barley fields of the State, but also in our crops of oats, corn, and cane. They have moved in grand armies, a d have done a more destructive work than the Army of the Potomac ever dreamed of accomplishing. Some reliable accounts report them as literally blackening the fields and highways, and sweeping everything before them.

Tar seems to be a serious embarrassment when strewn in their path, and many of our farmers have saved their corn crop by drawing one continuous line of it around the outside of their fields, putting the tar either upon the smooth surface of the ground, or on the edge of fencing beards, kept upright by sticks stuck down on either side.

It is the opinion of authors who have written on this subject, that they are most numerous and destructive in dry and hot seasons. Whether this be true or not, the experience of the present scorching season confirms the theory. Wet seems to be inimical to them, as a general rule, though we have met with persons this summer who thought their multiplication increased by the two or three heavy rains which fell in July.

The Chinch Bug is propagated by means of eggs, deposited in the ground, and are hatched out in the spring. By some who have carefully observed and noted their hab its, fall plowing is believed to be fatal to their eggs. Some are: also of the opinion that drilled wheat has suffered less than broadcast. All these suggestions are

worthy of attention and careful proving. But, after all, we incline to reiterate the opinion, that one of the best ways to get rid of them is to quit growing the crops on which they mainly depend for a living. EDITOR FARMER.

The Shady and the Sunny Side of
Farming.

The Atlantic Monthly for July contains
an article on 66
Glorying in the Goad,"
which we would be glad to put into the
hands of every farmer in the country. After
alluding to statistics which prove that agri-
culture is much less delightful and remu-
nerative, as an occupation than stump ora.
tors would fain make our American farmers.n
believe it is, the writer continues thus:

On the

his granary overflows. Here, surely, you have struck into the Happy Valley. Here at last Tityrus reposes under the shade of his broad-spreading beech-trees. contrary, you find Tityrus in the back sitting-room, roll ng his eyes in a fine frenzy over a very prose bucolic on the Condition and Prospects of Sheep-Husbandry, which he is writing for the "Country Gentleman" at five dollars a page All the cool of the day be works on his farm, and all the hot of the day he devotes to his manuscript; and he avers with a solemnity which carries conviction, that he and his wife have come to the conclusion that they are carrying on their farm for the benefit of the hired help! He is devoted to farming; he is interested in its processes; but the men and maids get all the profits, and he supports his family by his pen. Everywhere you find one song with variations. Farmers and farmers' wives are not in love with their "If you do not trust the testimony of calling. They are not enthusiastic over it. books, but will turn to living men, you will The "smartest of the children do not rescarcely fare better. One man, whose re- main at home to take charge of the farm, creations have been rural, but his business unless impelled by a sense of duty to their civic, conducts you through his groves and aged parents, or lured by some promise of summer-houses, his stone barns and his lat- extraordinary recompense. Everywhere the ticed cottages, but tempers your enthusiam farmer finds farming to be a "slave's life," with the remark, that this fancy farming is "a dog's life," "delve all your days, and sowing ninepences to reach sixpences. Re- nothin' to show for 't," "hard scrapin' to linquishing fancy farms, you go to the prac- make both ends meet." It is so unwieldly tical man swinging his scythe in his hay- a mode of applying means to ends, that, if field, his shirt-sleeves rolled above his el- you must believe him, every quart of milk bows, and his trousers tucked into his boots. costs him six cents, with the labor thrown He shows you the face walls and the com- in, while you pay the milkman but five cents post-heap, the drains and the resultant hay. at your own door; every dozen eggs which cocks, with measurable pride, but tells you he gathers from his own barn he gathers at at the same time that every dollar he has the rate of twenty-five cents a dozen, while earned on that farm has cost him nine shil-you are paying only twenty-two. And even lings. This will never do. A third farmer when both ends do meet, and not only meet, has inherited his farm, not only without in- but lap over, you scarcely find a hearty cheercumbrance, but with money at interest. fulness and sunshine, a liberal praise and Under his hands it waxes fat and flourish-unfeigne 1 ardor, a contageous delight in the ing, and sends to market every year its twelve or fifteen hundred hunded dollars' worth of produce. But you overhear its owner telling its neighbor that "it's a Cain's business, this farming: make any man cross enough to kill his brother!" You find this farmer racked with rheuma- Is this state of things inevitable? Farmtism, though in the prime of life,-bent ers have a very general belief that it is. with the weight of years before his time. They not only plod on in the old way themHe has lost his health just as he has im-selves, but they have no faith in the possi proved his farm, by working early and late through sun and rain. You turn to still another farm, whose owner brings the learning of a college as well as the muscles of a yeoman to the culture of the soil. His nurseries and orchards are thrifty, his cattle sleek and comfortable, his yards broad, cleanly, and sunny. His fields wave with plenty,

soil. "Jolly boys" in purple blouses may drive ploughs around pitchers, but they are rarely met on the hill-sides of New England. If we may credit Dr. Hall, they are quite as rarely seen on the rich, rolling lands towards the sunset.

ble opening-up of any other way. Their sole hope of bettering their condition lies in abandoning it altogether. If one son is superior to the others, if an only son concentrates upon himself all the parental affection, they do not plan for him a brilliant career in their own line; they do not look to him to obtain distinction by some great ag

views confirmed. The shoe-maker must bend over his lapstone, and he becomes stooping and hollow-chested. The black

ricultural achievement, a discovery of new laws or a new combination of old laws; all their love and hope find expression in the determination "not to bring him up to farm-smith twists the sinews of his arms to ing." They "don't mean he shall ever have to work." Hard work and small profits is the story of their lives, and of the lives of their ancestors. and they do not believe any other story will ever be truly told of the genuine farmer. And when we say small profits we wish the phrase to hold all the meaning of which it is capable. It is hard work and small profits to body and soul; small profits to heart and brain, as well as purse. But every plan which looks to better things is "notional," "new-fangled," "easier to tell of than 'tis to do"; and so the farmer goes on his daily beat, with a shame faced pride in his independence, fostered by the flattery of his county-fair ora- | tors, yet vituperating his occupation, bemoaning its hardships, and depreciating its emoluments, stubbornly set in the belief that he knows all there is to know about farming, and scornful of whatever attempts to go deeper than his own ploughshare, or cut a broader swath than his own scythe. To suggest the possibility that all this is the result of limite i knowledge, and that the most favorable and beneficial change might be found in a more liberal education and a wider acquaintance with the facts discovered and the deductions made by science, would be considered by a bold yeomanry, our country's pride, as an outbreak of "book-farming" in its most virulent form. "You may bet your hat on one thing," says the bold yeoman, a man may know sunthin', an' be a good minister an' a tol'able deacon, but he's spiled for farmin'."

"

Here the writer shifts the picture, gives us the sunny side of farming.

and re-read:

strength, but at the expense of his other members. The watchmaker trains his eyes to microscopic vision, but his muscles are small, and his skin colorless. A very large majority of the secondary callings remove men from the op-n air, often from sunshine, and generally train one or a few faculties at the expense of the others. The artisan carries skill to perfection, the genius towers into sublimity, but the man suffers. Not so the farmer. His life is not only many, but all-sided. His ever changing employment gives him every variety of motion and posture. Not a muscle but is pressed into service. His work lies chiefly out-of-doors. The freedom of earth and sky are his. Every power of his mind may be brought into play. He is surrounded by mysteries which the longest life will not give him time enough to fathom, problems whose solution may furnish employment for the deepest thought and the most sustained attention, and whose solution is at the same time a direct and most important contribution to his own ease and riches. The constant presence of beautiful and ever-shifting scenery ministers to his taste and his imagination. Nature, in her grandeur, in her loveliness, in the surpassing beauty of her utilities, is al ays spread before him. All her wonderful processes go on beneath his eyes. The great laboratory is ever open. The furnace-fire is always burning Patent to his curious or admiring gaze the transmutation takes place. The occult principle of life surrounds him, *might almost bewilder him, with manifestaand tions. Bec and bird, fruit and blossom and Read the phantom humanity in beasts, offer all their secrets to his eyes. Every process is his minister. His mental and material interests lie in one right line. The sun is his servant. The shower fulfils his behest. The dew drops silently down to do his work. The fragrance of the apple-orchard shall turn to gold in his grasp. The beauty of bloom shall fill his home with plenty. The frost of winter is his treasure-keeper, and the snows wrap him about with beneficence. With nothing trivial, deceptive, inflated, has he to do. An unimpeachable sincerity pervades all things. All things are natural, and all things act after their kind. Is it a divine decree that all this shall tend to no good? Shall all this pomp of preparation rghtly come to nothing? Do we gather the natural fruits of circumstance, when the mind travels on to madness, the body goes prematurely to disease and decay, and the

*

"Surely these things ought not so to be. Looking at this earth as the divinely prepared dwelling place of man, and looking at man as divinely appointed to dress and keep it, to replenish and subdue it, we should naturally suppose that there would be an obvious and pre-eminent adaptation of the one to the other. We should naturally suppose that the primary, the fundamental occupation of the race would be one which should not only keep body and soul together, but should be especially and exactly fitted to develope and strengthen all the powers called into exercise, and should also be most likely to call into exercise a great variety of powers to the fashioning of a healthy and beautiful symmetry. Looking still further at the secondary occupations, we find our

heart shrivels away from love and is overcast with gloom? Is all the appearance of adaptation false, and do farmers gain the due emoluments of their position? Not so. It is their fault that they do not see the life which revels in exuberance around them. In their minds is no under-draining, no subsoiling Earth, with all her interests, takes unrelaxing hold of their potato-patch, but they have eyes only for the potato-patch. Accustoming themselves to the contemplation of little things, considered separately, and not as links in the universal chain, their angle of vision has grown preternaturally acute. Things they see, but not the relations of things. They dwell on desert isl ands. For all the integrity of Nature, they fail to learn integrity. The honest farmer is no more common than the honest merchant. He abhors the tricks of trade he has his standing joke about the lawyer's conscience: but the load of hay which he sold to the merchant was heavier by his own weight on the scales than at the merchant's stable-yard; the lawyer who buys his wood, taught by broad rural experience, looks closely to the admeasurement; and a trout in the milk Thoreau counts as very strong circumstantial evidence. The farmer does not compass sublime swindles like the merchant, nor such sharp practice as the lawyer; but in small ways he is the peer of either. We do not say that fa mers are any more addicted to their characteristic vices than the lawyers and merchants are to theirs; but that they have their peculiarities, like other classes, and that the term honest is as necessary a prefix to farmer as to any other noun of occupation. We admit all this, but we believe it is the fault of the farmer, and not of his circumstances.

her very good. And "Very Good" is the true verdict. Ignorance, stupidity, and sin insist upon perpetuating the curse from which she has been once redeemed; but a blessing lies in her heart for him who has but the courage to grasp it."

Saving the Tobacco Crop.

We had intended, much earlier in the season, to finish what we had to say on the practical branch of Tobacco Culture, &c., but circumstances have prevented; and even now we prefer to lay before our readers the concise directions furnished to the press by the President of the Kentucky Board of Agriculture. They are as follows:

As the plant approaches maturity, it be gins to thicken, and assumes a stiff, slick and motley appearance, which the most unpracticed eye will readily detect. Should the weather be favorable, (n melv, dry,) the first ripe plants may be permitted to remain standing until a sufficient quantity is matured to satisfy the planter in making a regular cutting. If, however, the weather be unpropitious, it is best to cut as fast as it matures, as it is subject to injury, under such circum-tances, if suffered to remain too long. The harvesting of the crop is an important period in its cultivation, and neglect upon the part of the planter will bring loss in its future value. In cutting the plant, a sharp knife is to be used and the stalk to be split about half its length, taking care not to break the leaves, or otherwise injure them, and the plant to be set, with the butt of the stalk up, exposed to the sun. So soon as the plant is wilted enough to "His fault" says the farmer, and say handle without breaking, they should be many men of whom better things might be taken up and laid in a heap of seven to nine expected. "How can he get wisdom that in a place, being governed by their size, and holdeth the plow, and that glorieth in the hung as soon as possible, to prevent being goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in scorched by the sun. The after part of the their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?" day is best for cutting; there is less danger How? By "seeking her as silver, and of getting the plants sunburnt. The sticks searching for her as for hid treasures." For on which the plants are hung are small remember, O farmer! the despairing ques-pices of timber, four feet long, and of suffition is from below, the inspiring answer cient size to support the plants. These are from above. It is not the Bible, but the taken to a barn, on a cart or wagon, after Apocrypha, that casts doubt upon agricul- receiving the plants, or may be placed upon tural education. There is wisdom to him scaffolds, in the field, at the option of the that holdeth the plow. Honor and health planter. If the weather is fair, it is best to and wealth and great-heartedness are to be sun it, as it aids the curing, and adds to found in the soil. Earth is not one huge the strength and elasticity of the leaf after incumbrance to weigh man down; it is the it is cured. Care should be taken not to means by which he may rise to heavenly place the sticks too close together if the heights. Earth has been the mother of dig-weather be damp, as there is danger of innity ever since her Maker's eyes looked juring the plant After remaining on the upon her, and the Maker's voice pronounced scaffold a few days, it becomes yellow, or