82 NATURAL HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF GROTON, MASS. 



Springfield, where its nest actually has been taken. The only other 

 recorded evidence I can find of the breeding of the species in east- 

 ern Massachusetts is based on two families of well grown young, 

 found, one at Arlington (Auk, I, 192), the other at Marshfield 

 (O. & O. XIV, 144). In each of these cases the birds were not 

 discovered, until August 15, although it seems probable that they 

 had been bred in the neighborhood. — Charles F. Batchelder, 

 Cambridge, Mass. 



LEACH-TUBS. 



During my boyhood nearly every family in town had a 

 '* leach " standing outdoors within easy distance of the 

 kitchen, which was looked after by the women of the houes- 

 hold. It was used for draining water through wood-ashes in 

 order to get lye, a needed ingredient in making soft soap. 

 Sometimes a barrel or hogshead was called into requisition 

 for holding the ashes, but these receptacles were rather tem- 

 porary, as the lye would soon rot the staves ; and I have seen 

 a section of a hollow tree used for the purpose. The best 

 leach-tubs were made of plank, and in the form of an in- 

 verted truncated cone or pyramid, with a perforated bottom 

 covered with straw or twigs, letting the liquid percolate into 

 grooves cut in the supporting base in order to conduct it to a 

 pot under the edge. From time to time this receiving vessel 

 was emptied into the soap-fat barrel, which often stood in the 

 woodshed near by ; and occasionally a small piece of potash 

 was added to supplement the lye. With some other details 

 not necessary to mention here the product of the mixture was 

 the saponaceous compound known as soft soap. Within the 

 last fifty years these leaching vats have disappeared from this 

 neighborhood, and the ready-made article is brought from the 

 factory to the door of the house, where it is sold for cash or 

 bartered for grease or ashes. The change in such matters is 

 a phase of domestic evolution which is continually going on 

 around us, and yet so gradually that it makes but little im- 

 pression at the time, and is soon forgotten- 



