318 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



Stay-at-home had a much better one that was not there, 

 and consequently could not get the premium. Let the 

 premiums be — not for the biggest bull, for if that was 

 not a bull, it would be a boar; but let them be for those 

 who produced the most beneficial and useful examples 

 for their fellow citizens to follow. In this way we would 

 soon learn how many bushels of corn it took to make a 

 hundred of pork, instead of hearing how much more an 

 old sow weighed after she had drunk a bucket of swill 

 than she did before. We want more facts and less 

 puffing. 



"A Stone Scraper." — When I was a boy and lived 

 in stony Connecticut, I used to have the back ache and 

 sore fingers, "picking up stones." And as it was always 

 considered an "endless job," I suppose they are not all 

 picked up yet, particularly as there was when I left them 

 a great many small ones; and since then, I have seen a 

 great many small men grow into large ones, (in their 

 own opinion.) I don't know but some of those small 

 stones have grown large enough to be operated upon by 

 that stone scraper described by Mr. Bowman, 1 (page 34;) 

 and for the benefit of some of those Yankee boys' backs 

 and fingers, to say nothing about the sythes and conse- 

 quent grindstone turning, I want some of them to try 

 that scraper, and see if it will answer to pick up stones 

 with ; because if it does, I know my name will be blest by 

 the rising Yankee generation for making the suggestion 

 for their especial benefit. I would try it myself ; but as a 

 matter of geological information to those same Yankee 

 boys, I will inform them that out here on the prairie, they 

 could'nt find pebble stone enough on a thousand acres to 

 make a "right smart chance of a sizeable sort of a stone 

 heap." 



"Cream Pot Cattle." — It is with feelings far from 

 being allied to pleasure that I read the result of the sale 

 of this stock of cattle in friend Bement's letter, (page 

 36.) Hundreds of far less valuable cattle have been im- 



1 James L. Bowman, Brownsville, Pennsylvania. 



