THE FARMER AT HOME. 73 



wild carrot is white and small, as well as dry and strong flavored ; 

 which illustrates the remarkable improvement that has been effected in. 

 our common esculents by cultivation for a long series of years. The 

 various uses of the carrot in cookery are well known. But although 

 it contains much nutriment, it is difficult of digestion, particularly if 

 eaten raw or imperfectly boiled. Carrots are an excellent fodder for 

 horses, either alone or mixed with hay ; and if given to cows in win- 

 ter, or the early part of spring, they are said to cause a great increase 

 of milk, which will have a much less offensive taste and smell than 

 when they are fed on turnips. Crickets are so fond of these roots, 

 that they can easily be destroyed by making a paste of flour, powdered 

 arsenic and scraped carrots, and leaving the compound near the places 

 of their resort. They are a profitable crop for the farmer, being 

 raised at an expense of eight or ten cents per bushel, and an acre of 

 land yielding from five hundred to one thousand bushels. For stock 

 they cannot be estimated at less than forty cents a bushel, so that the 

 net profits of the carrot will be from one hundred and fifty to three 

 hundred dollars to the acre. 



CART. For a long period the use of the waggon for farming 

 purposes was almost unknown in this country. The reliance was on 

 the cart and oxen, instead of the waggon and horses. When a boy 

 we never saw the latter ; but as the latter increased, the former gave 

 way ; and now, the use of the cart is mostly confined to farms on 

 which cattle alone are used, and some particular sections of country. 

 It is a question however which deserves serious consideration by far- 

 mers, whether more on the whole has not been lost, than has been 

 gained by the change. On grain -growing farms, where much plough- 

 ing is to be performed, horses are indispensable, and the waggon of 

 course may be preferred ; but, there are multitudes of farmers who, 

 we think, would greatly promote their interests, by discarding their 

 waggon and its attendant span of inferior horses, and substituting in 

 their place, the old fashioned and less costly cart, and a yoke or two 

 of prime working oxen. 



CASHMERE GOAT. A nobler species of common goats, is 

 descended from the goat of Thibet, which pastures on the Himalaya. 

 The goats of Thibet and Cashmere have the fine curled wool close to 

 the skin, just as the under hair of our common goat lies below the 

 coarse upper hair. The wool is shorn in the Spring, shortly before 

 the warm season the time when the animal, in its natural state, 

 seeks thorns and hedges in order to free itself from the burden of its 

 warm covering. All the hard and long hairs are picked most care- 

 fully. The wool, thus purified, is washed, first in a warm solution of 

 potash, and afterwards in cold water, in which process felting must 

 be carefully avoided. It is then bleached upon the grass, and carded 

 for spinning. The shawl- wool is three times died before carding, 

 after spinning, and in the shawl. The Asiatics avoid spinning the 

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