31G THE FAllMERY. [Chap. III. 



tliiretj, and as a matter of profit to ourselves and liuinanity to them, we 

 slioukl SCO that their wants arc M'cll supplied. 



Pure water is very nutritious, and as a nutritious agent its value is im- 

 paired when of inferior quality, or when nii.xed with indigestible foreign 

 substances, such as arc often found in Avatcring-troughs located by the way- 

 f^ide. 



Some very interesting experiments liavc lately been made on horses 

 belonging to the Frencli army, in view of testing their endurance as regards 

 the deprivation of water, and it was found that some of them lived twenty- 

 live days on water alone ; it is a singular fact that seventy-five per cent, of 

 the weight of a horse's body is composed of fluid. 



Strange icater, as it is called, often has a bad efl'oct on tlic digestive organs 

 when first iised, and in order to guard against its consequences, English 

 grooms always provide for the wants of tlieir Jiorses, whe]i away from 

 home at the race-course, by furnishing them witii an abundant supjdy of 

 pure water to which they have been accustomed, which is transported from 

 place to place in hogsheads. 



3i0. The Hydraulic Raci. — To those who have no spring above tlie level 

 of the house, but have one below, we press the subject of a water-ram — a 

 simple, little, inexpensi\'e machine that can be made to throw about one 

 eighth or a tenth of the v.ater that flows through it up a steep hill and along 

 a pipe half a mile or more, discharging it in a cistern in the garret of a house 

 or loft of the barn, whence it is drawn as it is wanted in any apartment, 

 while the overflow or surplus of water will give you a constant litlle stream 

 in the cattle water-trough. Hundreds of these rams are in use all over the 

 country ; but there are thousands of places where they are not in use, where 

 equal natural facilities exist. Our object here is only to call attention to the 

 fact, that every farmer who has a spring in a valley where he can get three 

 or four feet fall from it to work the ram, can get a portion of that water on 

 top of a hill; and in many places where no running springs naturally exist, 

 sufficient water can be obtained by digging. We have seen a stream dis- 

 charged at the outlet of an underdrain snfficient to drive a ram — water ob- 

 tained without any expectation of obtaining it; because the object was to 

 drain the land of its surplus water, and prevent it from oozing out of the 

 surface of the hillside. 



The house of the late John C. Stevens, at South Amboy, is 120 feet above 

 the level of a spring, near the bay shore. At this spring he set a water-ram, 

 with a two-inch drive-pipe, about sixty feet long, laid upon an inclination 

 of five feet. About one eightii of the water which runs through this pipe 

 is sent, by the action of the ram — a little affair, about as big as a teakettle — ■ 

 up through a small lead pipe into the house, nearly half a mile distant. 

 Perhaps the whole may have cost $100. We know a good many places where 

 §50 has secured a full and constant supply of water from the bottom of a 

 hill almost impossible to climb, yet which had been climbed from the first 

 settlement of the country till the little water-ram was set to work. We know 



