INDIAN CORN FOR FODDER.

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upper intervale, resting on accumulations of gravel and sand, and therefore for the most part light, and sometimes sandy. Wheat, oats, Indian corn, and potatoes, are the crops raised—the corn more largely since the failure of wheat and potatoes commenced. The wheat on the ground this year promises 25 bushels an acre, potatoes yield an average of 150 to 200 bushels. The Indian corn always ripens, yields about 50 bushels, and is at present the most profitable crop.

The straw of the Indian corn is a very valuable fodder. If cut before it is dead ripe, it is as valuable as hay, and the cattle eat it as readily. Of this fact I afterwards met with many corroborations, though, both in the Provinces and in the Northern States, the wasteful practice of leaving the straw in the field uncut extensively prevails. Besides the grain, as much as three tons of excellent fodder may be generally reaped from an acre of Indian corn of the taller varieties. The advantage of this, not only in saving food, but in manufacturing manure, every home farmer at least will understand.

Indian corn has at various times been recommended as a grain crop to our British farmers. But our summers are not dry and hot enough to make it certain as a grain crop. It is worthy of a trial, however, as an occasional fodder or green crop on our lighter barley soils. A wellmanured field would raise a large crop of green stalks, which are very sweet, and it might be profitable either for soiling or for making into hay.

The stock kept by Mr Rankine was seventeen milk cows and thirteen other cattle, which consume on an average about 60 tons of hay. Butter and cheese meet with a ready sale. He had also sixty-five sheep, which average, including lambs, 6 lb. of wool. This his family manufactures into excellent homespun checks and tartans, which are sold in the neighbourhood.

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PROFITS OF FARMING.

The reader will naturally inquire, as I did-" Here you possess a farm of 1100 acres, and you have only 100 cleared, and of this 100 only 50 in arable culture; why don't you clear more, and farm more extensively?" "We clean up two or three acres every year of the lumbered land (land from which the timber has been cut,) because it is unsightly, not because we want it— we have as much land already as it is profitable to cultivate."

And this I afterwards found to be a very prevailing opinion, not only in New Brunswick and the other Provinces, but in the United States, as far west as the foot of Lake Erie, the limits of my own tour. It is profitable to farm as much as can be cultivated with the members of a man's own family-it is not profitable to farm with paid labour. That such an opinion should be so widely entertained shows that it is the result of a very wide experience. At the same time it may only be true of the system of farming hitherto adopted by the parties who entertain it, or inculcate it upon others. It may not be true of another or more improved system.

In reference to the agricultural capabilities and improvement of the colony, and especially in reference to the question of its being desirable as a settlement for British farmers possessed of capital and skill, this question is a most important one. I shall briefly state the general result of my inquiries when I shall have gone over a larger portion of the province.

Woodstock, the chief town in the county of Carlton, is advantageously situated at the mouth of the Meduxnakik, on the right bank of the St John. It has four churches, a grammar school, and about 3000 inhabitants. It is likely to flourish, both because it is connected with one of the richest agricultural districts in the province, and because here the road to Houlton in Maine branches off, and it ought therefore to be the centre of the traffic

COUNTRY NEAR WOODSTOCK.

53

with the upper portion of that state. The boundary line between Maine and New Brunswick runs about ten miles west of Woodstock.

From the mouth of Eel River, twelve miles below Woodstock, where we left the granite region, the soil has gradually improved; and from the neighbourhood of the town northwards to the Grand Falls, and on both sides of the St John, it is generally equal in quality to the best upland in New Brunswick. The Cambrian appears in this region to have given place to the Silurian slates, and the soil resembles in some degree those of the upper Silurian slates, which I afterwards saw in the wheat region of western New York.

The president of the county Agricultural Society drove me a few miles inland to what is called Scotch Corner, in the direction of the Maine boundary. A long, flat, second terrace, or intervale, stretches inland about a mile from Woodstock. The cleared land on this flat is valued at £5 an acre. The country as we proceeded was beautifully undulated-chiefly covered, where the forest remained, with large hardwood trees. The rock maple and black birch, mixed with butter-nut and elm, indicate good, deep, heavy land-the beech a heavier soil.

At Scotch Corner, I saw a fine second crop of potatoes, grown without manure; and I examined a field of oats, which was the tenth grain crop (oats, pease, and buckwheat in succession) grown on it without manure. The soil consisted of fragments of a shivery slate, which crumbles readily, and which, at a depth of sixteen inches, rests on the rotten slate rock.

Old Country agriculturists, or those who, without being farmers themselves, condemn every practice which differs from what they have been in the habit of hearing commended at home, cannot fairly appreciate the circumstances of the occupier of new land in a country like this.

For ten years for eight, or twelve, or twenty years in

!

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EXHAUSTING OF NEW LAND.

other localities-this new land requires no manure to make it yield good crops. On the contrary, the addition of manure makes the grain or grass crops at first so rank that they fall over, or lodge, and are seriously injured. Thus, to a settler on new land, which he clears from the wilderness, manure is not only unnecessary, but it is a nuisance; and hence he not only neglects the preparation of it, but is anxious to rid himself in the easiest way of any that may be made about his house or barns.

Careless and improvident farming habits were no doubt thus introduced, so that, when at last the land became exhausted, the occupiers were ignorant of the means of renovating it. Old habits were to be overcome, new practices to be adopted, and a system of painstaking and care to which they had been previously unaccustomed. Hence, no doubt, the reason why I was almost everywhere told that it was cheaper and more profitable to clear and crop new land, than to renovate the old.

Still, because of these future evils, we are not justified in speaking contemptuously of present holders of new land, who, being desirous of making the most of it with the means at their command, waste none of their attention upon unnecessary manures. These men form that body of pioneers in American agriculture, who, having done their work in clearing and superficially exhausting one tract of land, move off westward to do the same with another, selling off each farm in succession to men possessed of more knowledge than themselves; whose skill and industry must bring back the fertility which had disappeared under the treatment of their predecessors, and who have no temptation to fall off into negligent modes of farming.

According to this view, the emigration of this class of ✓ wilderness-clearing and new land-exhausting farmers, is a kind of necessity in the rural progress of a new country. It is a thing to rejoice in rather than to regret, as I found

WOODSTOCK CHARIVARI.

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some of my New Brunswick friends doing. At all events, I believe it has had a considerable influence in setting in motion and in maintaining that current of human movers, which, beginning in a tiny rivulet at Newfoundland, gathers, as it advances westward, till it forms the great river which is now flowing so fiercely into California.

On my return from Scotch Corner, I visited a fine farm belonging to my conductor, the president. It is let on shares to an English farmer. The landlord stocks it, the farm seeds itself, and the farmer does the farm work, and receives half the profits. The drought of the season had lightened the grain crops, but I saw some fields of excellent turnips, and some of oats averaging about twentyIsix bushels an acre. In the yard was a fine herd of stock, chiefly mixed Herefords and Devons, with a little short-horn blood. They were coarse and thick in the skin, but probably on that account better adapted to the climate. On the whole, though the owner thought I did not sufficiently praise them, I did not afterwards see in the province a herd in all respects equal to them.

At Woodstock, in the evening, we were gratified with an interesting musical entertainment. It seems that the Orangemen are numerous in some parts of New Brunswick, and that Woodstock has its full share of them. Some twelve months or more ago, a riot took place between them and the Romanists, (Mickeys, as they are here called,) attended by the destruction of a considerable amount of property, which the county of course was called upon to pay. But the county applied to the provincial House of Assembly, to have the sum in whole or in part paid out of the provincial treasury; and in reference to this matter, my fellow-traveller Mr Brown, as a member of assembly, had given a vote which was unsatisfactory to the Woodstock Orangemen. Hearing of his arrival, therefore, instead of lynching him, as they might have done a little farther West, they serenaded us all at