248 AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



pleasant feature to the farm. It ought to occupy a position 

 easily accessible to the other buldings and the fields, and yet 

 be within convenient distance of the highway. It is desirable 

 to have it so far removed as to admit of a light screen of 

 trees, and nature will thus add an ornament and protection 

 in the surrounding foliage, which no skill of the architect 

 can equal. 



JP&TiiE CELLAR. This is an essential appendage to a house, 

 particularly where roots are to be stored. Many appropriate 

 a part of it to the dairy, and if thus employed it should be 

 high, clean and well ventilated. The proper preservation of 

 what is contained in it, and the health of the inmates, demand 

 a suitable dryness and free circulation of air. The cellar is 

 frequently placed on the side of a hill, which renders it more 

 accessible from without. This is in no respect objectionable, 

 if the walls are made sufficiently tight to exclude the frosts. 

 When on level ground, they should be sunk only three or four 

 feet below the natural surface, and the walls raised enough 

 above to give all the room wanted ; and the excavated earth 

 can be banked around the house, thus rendering it more ele- 

 vated and pleasant. It also provides for the admission of light 

 i.nd air through small windows, which are placed above 

 ground. A wire gauze to exclude fiies, ought to occupy the 

 place of the glass in warm weather, and if liable to frosts, 

 there should be double sashes in winter. Ventilation is im- 

 portant in all seasons, and it may be secured by as large an 

 aperture as possible connected with the chimney, and the 

 windows may be thrown open in pleasant weather during the 

 warmer part of the day. The cellar should be connected with 

 the kitchen or sheds above, by safe, well lighted stairs. And 

 lastly, the entire building should be rat-proof. This is more 

 easily accomplished than is generally imagined. When 

 erecting a building, a carpenter or mason, for less than the 

 additional expense of a year's support for a troop of rats, can 

 for ever exclude them from it, by the exercise of a little inge- 

 nuity. A brick floor in a cellar is easily broken up by these 

 insidious and and ever-busy vermin, and a plank or wooden 

 floor is objectionable, from its speedy decay. The most effec-' 

 tive and permanent barrier to their inroads, is afforded by a 

 stone pavement laid with large pieces in cement, closely fit- 

 ted to each other and to the side walls. This is also secured 

 by placing a bed of small stones and pebbles on the ground 

 and grouting, or pouring over it a mortar made of lime and 

 sand so thin as to run freely between the stones. When dry 



