THE FARMER AT HOME. jy 



The cows yield only a small portion of milk, but it is of the most 

 extraordinary richness ; and, on this account, and perhaps for their 

 peculiar figure and color, they are often kept in the parks and plea- 

 sure-grounds of the opulent, where they are judged both useful and 

 ornamental. Their gentleness, their diminutive size, and even their 

 singular contour, together with the excellence of their milk, render 

 them favorites, where no remunerating return for their keeping is ex- 

 pected or desired. In proportion to the quantity of milk, the butter 

 it yields is astonishing ; a single cow has been known to give nine- 

 teen pounds of butter weekly for several weeks in iuccession. This, 

 of course, is a very rare occurrence ; the average is from six to eight 

 or nine pounds weekly, Juring the season, supposing the cow to be 

 first-rate of her kind. 



ALICONDA. An African tree of Congo, of immense bulk. Of 

 the bark a coarse thread is made ; the shell or rind of the fruit may 

 be made into a nourishing pap, serves for vessels of various kinds, 

 and gives an aromatic taste to water preserved in it. The small 

 leaves are used as food in time of scarcity, the large ones to cover 

 huts, and, being burned, makes good soap. 



ALKALIES. Alkalies are saline substances possessing a hot 

 and caustic taste, and readily corrode the flesh of animals ; they also 

 convert vegetable blue to a green color, are soluble in water, and 

 combine in various ways with acids, forming a variety of new bodiel 

 of very different qualities. With oils they form soaps. They are 

 known under two forms, the fixed and volatile. The fixed alkalies are 

 potash and soda ; the volatile alkali or Ammonia, is obtained from 

 animal matter ; and latterly, it has also been procured in large quan- 

 tities from the distillation of coal for gas. The fixed alkalies, potash 

 and soda, are products of the vegetable kingdom ; and used largely both 

 in medicine and the arts, chiefly in medicine, in combination with 

 acids forming neutral salts. Soda is also obtained from the salt of 

 the sea and that of mines. 



ALLUVION. Land deposited by the action of rivers ; either at 

 the mouths in lakes or the sea, or on the banks in their passages to 

 these receptacles. Constituted as it usually must be of the richei 

 and lighter parts of the regions drained by the river that deposites it, 

 it is the most fertile of soils, and the most valuable when it can be 

 drained, or rendered secure from floods. Nearly the whole of Hol- 

 land is alluvial. In this country the vast tract on both sides of the 

 Mississippi, for a great distance from its mouth, is of this character ; 

 but owing to its annual submersion is of comparative little value. 

 Perhaps there is no river in the United States, in proportion to its 

 length and volume, that has so much valuable alluvion on its borders 

 as the Genessee in New- York. 



ALTERNATION. Ir. agriculture this term means the system 



