104 TREATMENT OF NEWLY CLEARED LAND. Mr Porter, on clearing new land from the forest, will give the reader an idea of the general character of the treatment to which less prudent men subject their land. He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop of potatoes, followed by one of wheat with grass seeds. Nine successive crops of hay follow in as many years; after which the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, a crop of wheat is taken; it is then manured for the first time, or limed, and laid down again for a similar succession of crops of hay. This treatment is hard enough; but the unskilful man, after burning and spreading the ashes, takes two or three or more crops of grain, leaves it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as it bears a crop which is worth the cutting-after all which he either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again into the wilderness state. In clearing land in this district, it is calculated that the first three crops, which are merely harrowed in, will pay all the expense of cutting the timber, burning, and cultivating. If the settler then abandon it, he is no loser : everything he cuts off it afterwards is gain, or any sum for which he can sell his cleared land. This is a great inducement to the exhausting system, which clears annually new land for grain, cuts for hay all which the old cropped land will yield, till it is again overrun with a young growth of wood, and neither saves, collects, nor values manure. This system is barbarous, reprehensible, and wasteful to the country—and yet it is probably the method which yields a ready sustenance to the settler's family at the smallest expense of mental and bodily labour. Our condemnation of the pioneers of civilisation in a new country ought not, therefore, to be too severe or indiscriminate. With all our skill, we English farmers and teachers of agricultural science should, in the same circumstances, probably do just the same, so long as land was plenty, labour scarce and dear, markets few and distant, and PLAGUE OF GRASSHOPPERS. 105 prices of produce low. As population increases, a higher class will come in, will purchase the exhausted farms, and for their skill and manure will obtain from the soil new returns, as large, and perhaps as profitable as those which rewarded the men who first penetrated the bush. Or if such men do not come in, and the land still continues in the hands of the original clearers, or their sons, the good of the country will demand that steps should be taken to instruct and enlighten them in regard to the principles of agriculture, and by degrees to wean them from an agricultural routine which is no longer either the most profitable to the individual, or adapted to the altered circumstances of the country. In walking over Mr Porter's farm, my attention was drawn to the vast number of grasshoppers which were jumping about, not only in his grass, but in his turnip fields. I had observed them previously in considerable numbers at various places on the St John River, but here the land seemed almost alive with them. They appear during the hot weather of midsummer and autumn, and attack the turnip crops as well as the grass, sometimes entirely stripping them of their leaves. If the young turnips are not sufficiently forward by the middle or end of July, when the grasshoppers begin to swarm, they are sometimes entirely destroyed. This is a pest of which our British turnip-growers, so far as I am aware, have no cause to complain. In New England, five or six different grasshoppers, besides as many species of locust, appear in their warm summers. In Massachusetts, the grass in the meadows and moist fields is filled with myriads of small grasshoppers, of a light green colour, which do much injury to the grass. But, in New England, grasshoppers are not generally distinguished from the small varieties of locusts which are common in that country. One of these, the small red-legged locust, about an inch in 106 ENCOURAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURE. length, infests the salt marshes in such numbers as almost entirely to consume the grass; and when the scanty crop of hay is gathered, it is so tainted with the putrescent bodies of the dead locusts contained in it that it is rejected by cattle and horses.* It is some small return for their ravages that the bodies of these creatures manure the fields they have infested, and that poultry thrive upon them. Young turkeys, in the summer, live almost entirely upon these grasshoppers in parts of Massachusetts, and become fat. The Northumberland Agricultural Society, which has its headquarters at Douglas, has hitherto been the most influential in the province, and has received the largest share of the legislative grant for the encouragement of agriculture. A method of promoting improvement among the rural population, which is common to the provincial and to the New England state legislatures, is to give from the public funds to every society a sum of money, bearing a fixed proportion to the amount raised among its own members. In New Brunswick, for every pound subscribed in a district for the promotion of agriculture, the Legislature formerly gave £2, and now give as much as £3, from the Provincial Treasury, thus stimulating at once and rewarding the local subscribers. For this purpose, £6150 were voted by the New Brunswick Legislature in 1848. In this district I found some of the best farming and best farmers in the province, and some of the warmest friends of agricultural improvement. As there are at present many farms to be disposed of upon the Miramichi River, for which persons who know something of agriculture are eagerly desired from the Old Country, I shall insert the average produce, price, and weight per bushel, of the usually cultivated crops in the county of * HARRIS's Insects of Massachusetts Injurious to Agriculture, p. 136. AVERAGE PRODUCE, PRICES, AND WAGES. 107 Northumberland, which embraces most of the good land on the Miramichi and its tributary waters. The average price of cheese is 54d. a pound, and of butter 9d. The average wages paid for agricultural labour are, in summer, from 50s. to 60s. a month, or, by the whole year, £27, 10s. currency, in addition to board, washing, and lodging. Day-labourers receive from onehalf to three-quarters of a dollar, with provisions. After a hasty survey of the neighbourhood of Douglas, we drove down to the river, and crossed to the town of Chatham, on the right bank. Near the ferry we found a large encampment of Indians, who are about two hundred strong, on the Miramichi River, and own reserves of about 22,000 acres, some of which consist of excellent land. It was amusing to see the little papooses, only a few weeks old, swaddled up tight, tied fast to a bit of board, and set on end against the outside of the wigwams, apparently unheeded by anybody. No movement was made by any of the females, nor a sound uttered by the infant, when I took up one of them and affected to carry it off with me to the boat. The town of Chatham is about equal in size to Douglas, and, like it, is dependent partly upon the lumber-trade and partly upon the agricultural traffic. On this occasion I merely drove through it with the view of reaching Richibucto, a distance of forty miles south, before nightfall. 108 GOLDEN ROD, A TROUBLESOME Weed. Half-an-hour brought us to the Napan River, a stream which widens as it descends, and falls into Miramichi Bay. On this river there is much good strong land, a stiff clay, the first I had seen in the settlement, for the improvement of which I was satisfied, notwithstanding the drought--which even here had reduced the hay-crop to one-third of its usual amount-that the system of thorough drainage might, even in this climate, be unhesitatingly recommended. This clay is specially infected with two species of golden rod, (Solidago canadensis and S. altissima,) which are troublesome weeds, and the former especially difficult to extirpate. Neither of these species of golden rod is known as a weed in Europe. The only European species is the Solidago virgo aurea, which is also a native of America. It is not known as yet how many species of golden rod are to be found in New Brunswick; but in the state of New York no less than twenty-two species are known. It is very interesting to the botanist and physiologist to observe such differences in the flora of countries so closely allied as Great Britain and Northern America now are; but, as practical indications of the qualities of soils, this new flora is a source of difficulty to the visitor or settler from the Old Country, who is accustomed from early observation to connect in his mind the qualities of a soil with the weeds which grow upon it. It is a matter of regret that botanical collectors do not describe more particularly both the kind of soil on which plants usually occurwhich, when troublesome weeds, they infest-and the geological formations on which they are most frequently found. A practical value would thus be given to botanical descriptions, which hitherto they have seldom possessed. To the English traveller, who is less interested about the indications of the humbler vegetable tribes, the numerous new species of familiar kinds of trees he meets with in Northern America are more striking. Thus in |