As there appears some truth in the remark, I am inclined to adopt the plan.

Vegetables are in general fine, and come quickly to maturity, considering the lateness of the season in which they are usually put into the ground.  Peas are always fine, especially the marrowfats, which are sometimes grown in the fields, on cleared lands that are under the plough.  We have a great variety of beans, all of the French or kidney kind; there is a very prolific white runner, of which I send you some of the seed:  the method of planting them is to raise a small hillock of mould by drawing the earth up with the hoe; flatten this, or rather hollow it a little in the middle, and drop in four or five seeds round the edges; as soon as the bean puts forth its runners insert a pole of five or six feet in the centre of the hill; the plants will all meet and twine up it, bearing a profusion of pods, which are cut and foiled as the scarlet-runners, or else, in their dry or ripe state, stewed and eaten with salt meat; this, I believe, is the more usual way of cooking them.  The early bush-bean is a dwarf, with bright yellow seed.

Lettuces are very fine, and may be cultivated easily, and very early, by transplanting the seedlings that appear as soon as the ground is free from snow.  Cabbages and savoys, and all sorts of roots, keep during the winter in the cellars or root-houses; but to the vile custom of keeping green vegetables in the shallow, moist cellars below the kitchens, much of the sickness that attacks settlers under the various forms of agues, intermittent, remittent, and lake-fevers, may be traced.

Many, of the lower class especially, are not sufficiently careful in clearing these cellars from the decaying portions of vegetable matter, which are often suffered to accumulate from year to year to infect the air of the dwelling.  Where the house is small, and the family numerous, and consequently exposed to its influence by night, the baneful consequences may be readily imagined.  “Do not tell me of lakes and swamps as the cause of fevers and agues; look to your cellars,” was the observation of a blunt but experienced Yankee doctor.  I verily believe it was the cellar that was the cause of sickness in our house all the spring and summer.

A root-house is indispensably necessary for the comfort of a settler’s family; if well constructed, with double log-walls, and the roof secured from the soaking in of the rain or melting snows, it preserves vegetables, meat, and milk excellently.  You will ask if the use be so great, and the comfort so essential, why does not every settler build one?