THE FARMER AT HOME. 43 



houses of our principal cities, and appropriated to this purpose. 

 When animals are attacked with fever, one of the surest remedies is 

 bleeding, either Ipcal or general, as the cause may demand. 



In a fluid of such importance as the blood, it will readily be 

 inferred that many material changes are constantly going on, both of 

 a physical and chemical kind, so as to modify constitutional tempera- 

 ments, regulate the condition of health, and influence morbid affec- 

 tions ; these changes, however, have not hitherto been ascertained 

 with anything like a precision sufficient to authorize inferences as to 

 the connection of such and such variations with such and such mala- 

 dies. Indeed the seemingly innoxious nature of the blood, while the 

 frame is under the influence of the most noxious poisons, is a striking 

 fact in the animal economy. It has, for example, been ascertained 

 that the flesh and the blood of an animal that is laboring under 

 hydrophobia, and which animal, by its saliva, is capable of innocu- 

 lating another with the specific disease, may be eaten with impunity. 



Again, puncture the veins of an individual who is the subject of 

 small-pox, take blood from that subject, and mix it with the blood of 

 another, you will not by this process impart the sickness ; an imparta- 

 tion which every one knows to be effected with facility by a very 

 minute portion of the matter taken from the pustules that charac- 

 terize the disorder. 



BLOSSOM. The opening of flowers in general. It is a term 

 applicable to every species of tree or plant, arid more frequently used 

 than flower or bloom, when we have reference to the fruit which is 

 to succeed. Thus, we say flowers, when we speak of shrubs cultivated 

 for ornament ; and we say bloom, in a more general sense in reference 

 to the beauty of flowers, 



BLUBBER. Is the fat of whales, and other large sea animals, 

 whereof train oil is made. It is properly the adeps of the animal ; it 

 lies immediately under the skin, and over the muscular flesh. In the 

 porpoise, it is firm and full of fibres, and invests the body about an 

 inch thick. The whole quantity yielded by one of those animals ordi- 

 narily amounts to forty or fifty, sometimes eighty hundred weight, or 

 even more. 



BOA. The negro name of a great tree that grows in some of the 

 parched districts of Africa, and in a wonderful manner furnishes sup- 

 plies of water. The trunk of this tree, which is of a prodigious bulk, 

 is naturally hollow like a cistern. In the rainy season it receives its 

 fill of water, which continues fresh and cool in the greatest heats, by 

 means of the tufted foliage which crowns its summit. Another man- 

 ner in which Providence has contrived a supply for the thirst of man, 

 in sultry places, is no less worthy of admiration. Nature has placed 

 amidst the burning sands of Africa, a plant, whose leaf, twisted round 

 like a cruet, is always filled with the quantity of a large glass full of 



