which will probably prevent another sale until 1854. All who desire to improve their stock will now have an opportunity of doing so, which it will be well to improve. RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES. John C. G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census, has recently prepared for Jules Cartin, Minister of Public Works of Paris, an interesting statement in regard to the railroads of the United States. Mr. Kennedy estimates the length of railroads completed and in contemplation, as follows: "The number of miles of railroad in operation in the United States, January 1, 1852, was, as nearly as can be ascertained, 10,8144. At the same time there was in the course of construction an extent of railroad amounting, according to the most reliable estimates, to 10,898 miles. By far the greater portions of the lines commenced, but now incomplete, will be finished within the ensuing five years. The length of railroad brought into operation since January 1, 1848, is 5,224. Within the last year, 2153 miles have been finished. Nearly all the lines in progress have been commened since 1848. It is supposed that from 1000 to 1500 miles additional to the 10,898 now known to be in progress, will be put under contract during 1852." Mr. Kennedy thinks that in 1860, the United States will be traversed by at least 30,000 miles of railroad. The average cost of building railroads, per mile, in New-England, is about $45,000; in New-York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, $40,000. In many of the Western States, the cost of grading does not exceed $1000 per mile. The cost of the railroads in operation in the United States, Mr. Kennedy assumes to be $348,000,000. "I have your note of this morning, with that of your correspondent enclosed. I presume from the pencil-mark beneath his signature that the writer is a resident of Accomac county, Virginia. If so, the salt water he is using is probably sea water, and contains so little chloride of sodium as to render it unprofitable for the manufacture of salt at the present low price of that article. He speaks of the pickle being stronger than that of the Syracuse salines. Forty gallons of the Syracuse brine will make fifty-six pounds of salt; or, say a gallon of brine will make twenty-four ounces of salt, which is three ounces of salt to every pint of brine. The brine of the salt-mines of Saltville, Virginia, yields two pounds of salt to the gallon, or four ounces to the pint, and is the purest salt in the world. I will write the communication you desire, if you can inform me in reference to the quality of the brine. I will endeavor to send you a communication relative to the manufacture of salt, in time for your May publication. "Yours truly, E. M." [Our friend in Virginia will see what information is needed by our correspondent, and if he will send it to us, we will guarantee an answer that will be of public interest and utility. The promised communication from our correspondent had not reached us at the time of our going to press.—Eds. P., L., & A.] FAIRBANKS' PLATFORM SCALES.-We have been much gratified with an examination of these scales, which seem to be adapted to every required operation of weighing. The universal confidence felt in their accuracy and perfect adjustment is such, that they are now regarded as the standard from which there is no appeal. We doubt if they are equalled in this or any other country. The general depots are 89 Water st., NewYork, and St. Johnsbury, Vt. FALL RIVER ROUTE TO BOSTON.-The season of summer travel, which has already commenced briskly, attests the popularity this route over any other between NewYork and Boston. The Company has made extensive improvements on their boats, the Empire State and Bay State, putting in new engines, painting, gilding, and refurnishing throughout. These beautiful boats, which have always been the handsomest in the world, now really excel themselves! With such splendid boats, and such accomplished commanders as Captains BRAYTON and BROWN, the Fall River route must always be the most fashionable and popular, as it is the most comfortable and expeditious of any route of travel between the two most enterprising cities in America. INTERESTING ARTESIAN WELL.-There is an Artesian well at the cotton factory of Joel Matthews, in Dallas county, Ala., which is 710 feet 10 inches in depth, and which discharges 600 gallons of water per minute, or 864,000 gallons in twenty-four hours, exceeding any well in America. The water flows out with such force, that if pieces of stone as large as an egg, or a half dollar, are thrown in, they are immediately ejected. The sand, gravel, &c., made by the auger, are also forced out by the water, which is perfectly clear, limpid, and pleasant to the taste. The diameter of the well is a little over six inches, and it is Mr. Matthews' intention, as soon as he has had it tubed the entire distance now completed, to have the boring continued to a greater depth. This will make it, it is believed, the most wonderful Artesian well in America. FORMATION OF A NEW AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.-Wm. L. Crawford, Esqr., under date of Locust Grove, Hancock Co., Va., April 20th, 1852, writes us as follows: "We have, within the past month, organized an Agricultural Society in our little county-little in territory, but great in soul, By one of the by-laws, persons obtaining premiums for cereals or roots are required to present to the society, through the Recording Secretary, a written account of the modus operandi in the cultivation of the premium article. Such of these accounts as may be deemed worthy of publication, I shall take pleasure in forwarding you, that they may appear in the Plough, Loom, and Anvil." [We shall take great pleasure in receiving and laying before our readers any articles our obliging correspondent shall forward us. We are very glad to receive such articles, and wish our readers generally would exercise a greater freedom in making known the results of their experience in farming or gardening through our pages.-EDITORS.] SEVENTH CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES.We have been much gratified with an inspection of the "Census Returns complete" of the State of Maryland; and we cannot let the occasion pass without a tribute of admiration to this truly remarkable workremarkable alike for a vast amount of information condensed within a narrow compass, and for the singular lucidity with which that information is presented. The volume before us contains not only the most complete statistics, but also a concise historical, geographical, and geological description of the State, and of each particular county. It was prepared, that it might be submitted to Congress as imbodying views suggestive of the manner in which the Census Returns of the United States should be presented, to render them of the greatest utility. The public in general entertain but vague and imperfect ideas of the value of statistics; yet they is to the statesman what a well kept set of books are to the merchant-an indispensable reference in his most important transactions. But to the general inquirer, statistics are exceedingly interesting. The farmer, the mechanic, and all others engaged in the multifarious pursuits by which man earns his bread, can, by turning a few pages, ascertain the number occupying his own peculiar field of labor, the amount of capital employed in it, and the number, variety, and value of its products. Some opposition exists, we understand, to the publication of the Census, as proposed by Mr. Kennedy, and approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Without pausing to refute (as might easily be done) the objections which might be urged against it, we as projected, the work will be not only of will venture to predict that, when completed incalculable value to the country, but will prove a lasting and magnificent monument to the power, the wealth, the grandeur and social happiness resulting from our free institutions. HUDSON RIVER RAILROAD.-It is only a short time since this road was opened through to Albany, and already the Company is running seven trains a day between the two cities! This, on the very banks of a river whose boats are famed the world over for speed and comfort, indicates an amount of travel and prosperity unparalleled. Distance is almost entirely annihilated by this road, as the cars pass over the entire route (160 miles) in about four hours! The road passes sometimes on the river's bank; sometimes over its surface, some distance from the shore; sometimes through tunnels under huge mountains; and is rich in interesting scenery from one end to the other. The arrangements of the Company to guard against accident are admirable, and the passenger, though fre quently moving at the rate of forty miles an hour, feels a conscious security which obviates any cause of alarm. Persons from a southern point, in quest of the healthful waters of Saratoga Springs, can have an opportunity of confirming all that we say in relation to the excellency of this road. RUSSELL COMSTOCK'S THEORY OF TERRA CULTURE.-We have felt a considerable interest in the lectures of Mr. Comstock on his newly discovered theory of Terra Culture, and have no doubt but that a general adoption of it would result in a vast increase of our agricultural products. We have attended one lecture, and can assert, confidently, that the man who listens to Mr. Comstock attentively for a couple of hours will not regret paying the dollar which the privilege will cost him. The following letters from Professor Norton and Professor Johnson, Professors of the Science and Practice of Agriculture, of the Albany University and Albany State Normal School, fully express our views, and are highly creditable to Mr. Comstock's discovery: ALBANY, N. Y., Jan. 29, 1852. MR. RUSSELL COMSTOCK.-Dear Sir: I have listened to your lecture upon the principles of Vegetable Physiology in certain applications, and have been much interested. The record of experiments adduced seem to uphold your views, and I shall certainly test them for myself during the coming season. Should your theories prove to be entirely correct, they would afford us satisfactory explanations of many phenomena that are as yet but imperfectly understood. I am, sir, very respectfully yours, JOHN P. NORTON. ALBANY, N. Y., Jan. 29, 1852. MR. RUSSELL COMSTOCK.-Dear Sir: After attending your lecture on a newly discovered principle of "Vegetation," I do not hesitate to say that, judging from the evidence you have presented, it is a genuine law of vegetable physiology; a law newly discovered, and promising to do more than any hitherto discovered, in elevating agriculture to the rank of an exact science. Your discovery seems to possess all the characteristics of a law of nature; being simple, conflicting with no known principles of agricultural science, and apparently capable of explaining many of the constantly discrepant results of even the most enlightened experimenters. If, as it seems, it be true; if the most rigid experimental investigation of its merits confirm it fully, the benefits that must come from its application can scarcely be exaggerated. I hope the proverbial ingratitude of republics will not deprive you of the reward due to your merit, nor the world of so promising a discovery. Yours, &c. SAMUEL W. JOHNSON. CAMDEN AND AMBOY ROUTE BETWEEN PHILADELPHIA AND NEW-YORK.-Our pages have so often borne testimony to the superiority of this route over any other, that it is almost superfluous to say any thing more. We must add, however, that the excellent boat "JOHN POTTER," running between Amboy and New-York, has recently been thoroughly refitted for the summer travel. It is newly painted, gilded, carpeted, and renovated throughout, and, with its gentlemanly commander, CAPTAIN SIMPSON, is a real luxury to the traveller. A trip on the We BRIDGING THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER.-Our February number contained an article on the importance of constructing a bridge over this river at Havre de Grace, in Maryland, to facilitate the travel on the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad. We are pleased to learn that the Legislature of Maryland have had the subject under discussion, and that ardent hopes are entertained of the passage of the measure. wonder that the Legislature of so enterprising a State should stand in the way of an object whose attainment would prove so beneficial to the public generally, no less than to the State itself. This road is the most important link of travel between the South and the North, and the want of a bridge at this point is felt by the hundreds of thousands who every year pass over it. Let the bridge be built! CLIMBING ROSES.-The climbing sorts of roses may be introduced to good advantage by training them to trellises of the pillar form. In the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh they are trained to living supports. These consist of straight poplars, closely pollarded, so as to show a few branches at the top only. The Banksian rose is one of the finest climbers, but has one peculiarity, viz.: the shoots of one year's growth only produce flowers. The pruning, consequently, must be performed at midsummer, that time may be allowed for the development of new shoots; as late pruning prevents the formation of flower-buds the succeeding year. The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil. VOL. V. JULY, 1852. No. 1. WORKING OF BRITISH FREE TRADE. (CONTINUED.) IN a former number* it was promised that the review of Mr. Rantoul's speech should be continued. We desired to show to our readers that the knowledge of political economy displayed therein was on a par with the accuracy of the facts, each and every one of which had been shown to have no foundation but in the fertile imaginations of those who had made the hon. gentleman the conduit through which to convey to the world a greater mass of misstatements than we had ever before seen compressed into so small a space. It is proposed now to redeem that promise. The hon. gentleman is, as our readers have seen, a great advocate of railroads, which he regards as "the greatest invention that science has yet given us for increasing the value of land." Had he read ADAM SMITH, he would have found, as we have before suggested to him, a greater one, for he would there have found that the natural place for the artisan is by the side of the producer of food and wool, the first to be eaten while the latter was being converted into cloth and fitted for cheap transportation to distant countries and that the more fully the consumer and the producer could thus be brought together, the greater must be the increase in the value of land. In a piece of cloth, according to that highest of real free-trade authorities, there are many hundredweights of food and wool, the transportation of which, in their original forms, would be highly burdensome to the farmer, who is therefore greatly benefited by having them reduced into the compact form of cloth; and that he is so, we have the admission of the hon. gentleman himself. "Diminish," says he, "the time and expense of reaching a market from a section of land in Missouri, and you raise the price of that land instantly and largely the moment you do so," an assertion the truth of which cannot, even for a moment, be questioned. The object of the tariff of 1842 was that of enabling the farmer to send his products to market in the most compact form, and thus to diminish both the time and expense of reaching the market, Under it the corn and other raw products of Missouri were converted into lead, and to so great an extent that the export of that commodity from the West rose from year to year, until in 1847 it had attained the amount of nearly 800,000 pigs, with every reason to believe that by this time it would reach 1,600,000, and thus were the time and expense of sending to market the products of Missouri and Illinois greatly diminished, a process which, according to the reasoning of the hon. gentleman, should have added largely to the value of land. Under it the corn of Ohio and Indiana was being fed to the great manufacturer of manure, the hog, and the hay and other descriptions of food were being fed to those other manufacturers of manure, the ox and the sheep, and to so great an extent See No. for April. VOL V.-1 1 that the export by the New York Canal of the product of animals, doubled in six years, and thus did the farmer find a great decrease in "the time and expense of reaching a market." Under it, the corn and the pork of Kentucky and the neighbouring States were fed to that other manufacturer of manure, the labourer, to so great an extent that the quantity of hemp received at New Orleans rose from one thousand two hundred and eleven bales, in 1841-2, to sixty thousand bales in 1846-7, and thus did the planter find a great decrease in "the time and expense of reaching a market." Under the tariff of 1846, we find the export of lead diminishing from year to year, until in the last one it had fallen to 325,000 tons, and is likely in the present one to fall below even 250,000. Under it, we find the product of animals passing through the New York Canal diminishing from year to year, and likely to fall in the present one to little above the point at which it stood nine years since, within which time the population of the West must have almost doubled. Under it, we find the quantity of the same commodities received at New Orleans diminishing from year to year, and with a rapidity beyond all example. Under it, we find the export of food in the form of hemp gradually falling, until it has almost reached the point at which it stood in 1842-3. Under it, the export of food in the form of bagging is steadily and regularly diminishing; but under it, the export of Indian corn, the rudest form in which food can be exported, is steadily increasing, and thus it is that the policy advocated by the hon. gentleman is profiting the farmer and the planter in increasing instead of diminishing the time and expense of going to market. Diminish the export of food in the form of lead, of pork and of beef, of butter and of cheese, of hemp and of bagging, and send to market ten tons of Indian corn where before you sent a single ton of butter or of cheese, of hemp or of bagging, and you will thus, according to our orator, diminish the "time and expense of reaching a market," and thus will you give value to your land. Such is the political economy of the Manchester school, in which the hon. member is so distinguished a professor ! It has been in vain that we have looked through this speech for any reference to the fact that the more distant the market the greater is the difficulty of restoring to the land that most important portion of the farmer's crop, the manure. When corn is converted, on the farm on which it is produced, into pork, and hay into beef, the refuse of the food goes back upon the land, which becomes enriched instead of being exhausted, whereas when the farmer kills his hogs and sells his corn, his land is speedily worn out, and then he runs away himself. Under the tariff of 1842, there was a steady increase in the manufacture of manure, as is shown by the fact that the export of the product of animals doubled in six years, whereas since the tariff of 1846 became fairly operative, the number of hogs and of cattle has steadily and rapidly declined, and with it the power of the farmer to maintain the productive power of his land. The railroad is truly a great invention, for it enables the farmer to send his corn to market, but it is forgotten by the hon. gentleman that the farmer needs a market in which to obtain manure as well as one in which to sell his corn. When he feeds the food on the ground, he obtains the manure altogether free of cost. When he carries his corn and his pork to his neighbours engaged in producing iron, coal, lead, hemp, or cloth, he has the manure at small cost for transportation; but when the hogs and the cattle disappear, and the corn has to go to a distant market, he pays freight on a large bulk instead of a small |