CIENTIFIC FARMING.

I went out one morning to build a barn. Not that I knew exactly how to
build a barn, but I knew very well how to keep up a mighty clatter, till
some one should come that did know, which amounts to the same thing.
There was, indeed, already a barn on our plantation. It was there many
years before we were. I ought to say, a part of it; for the barn is a
conglomerate, the further end stretching far back into antiquity, and
the hither end coming down to a period which is within the memory of men
still living. Of course its ancient history is involved in obscurity;
but as we read in the rocks somewhat of the earth's otherwise unwritten
story, so in our barn are many marks which point out to the curious
student the different eras of its creation. The main line of demarcation
comes in the centre, and consists chiefly of a kind of bulge. That part
of the front which dates back to the Lower Silurian epoch ran
south-southwest, but at some time during the Drift period it turned to
the right about and drifted to the north-northeast. The result is a bold
front, subtending an obtuse angle. People who have nothing else in the
world to annoy them might afford to be annoyed by this departure from a
right line; but unless one is reduced to such straits, he will do well
to call it a bow-window, and be at rest,--which, indeed, it is, only the
window is a little to the windward of the bow.

Viewed in certain aspects, an old barn is far superior to a new one. If
you build a new barn, you have no resources. It is all finished, and you
know where you are. There is a place for everything, and everything in
its place. There is no use in looking for anything. If it is not where
it belongs, it will not be anywhere. An old barn, on the contrary, is a
mine of wealth. It has nooks and corners full of rubbish waiting to be
turned to all manner of beautiful use. Do you want a shingle, a board,
a door, a window, a log, a screw, a wedge? There are heaps and piles of
them somewhere, if you do not mind cobwebs. The old barn has a sort of
sympathy with you, welcomes you to secret recesses, and never snubs you
with primness when you are at a pinch: not to mention the dove-cotes,
and the martins' nests, and the mouse-holes, and the lurking-places
loved of laying hens.

I will tell you a very romantic story, too, about this old barn.--Once,
a great many years before any of us were born, there lived on this
plantation a charming young pr