Page:Rural Hours.djvu/252

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226
RURAL HOURS.

in other parts of the State; we have just heard that two hundred head of cattle, and two thousand head of sheep, have been driven into our county from St. Lawrence, to be pastured here during the drought. Generally, our grass and foliage are refreshed by passing showers, during the warmest weather, and the beauty of the verdure is a source of great pleasure to those who come from the brown fields about New York and Philadelphia.

The crops are those which belong naturally to a temperate, hilly country. Wheat, oats, buckwheat, maize, potatoes, and barley are the most common, with some turnips and carrots for fodder. Rye is rather rare. Hop-grounds are frequent, for although this is not much of a beer-drinking community, yet a large amount of hops is carried hence to the sea-ports for European markets. These fields are said to be very profitable for the owners, but they are by no means so pleasing in a landscape as grain or pasture lands. Those two vines, the hop and the grape, so luxuriant and beautiful in their natural state, alike lose much of their peculiar grace, when cultivated in the common way; at a distance, a hop-ground and a vineyard very much resemble each other, though the hop is trained much higher than the grape; the poles and stakes in each case go far toward destroying the beauty of the plants. Both these vines, by-the-by, the grape and the hop, are natives of this part of the country.

The new disease among the potatoes, which has already done so much mischief in past years, has only shown itself this season in some few fields. Generally, the crop looks quite well in our neighborhood. This disease seems to be one of the most singular on record in the vegetable world, unaccountable in its origin, and so very general in both hemispheres; is it not the only instance