112 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



milk, i. e. on curds. He adds, that curds are the whole food of the 

 people of Upper Auvergne in France, and whey their only drink. 



CURRANTS. Are so called because formerly coming from the 

 Isthmus of Corinth. They come from several other places of the 

 Archipelago. The little Spanish currants are sometimes sold for 

 them. They are a kind of small raisins or dried grapes of different 

 colors, red, white, or black. They must be chosen new, small, and 

 in large masses. When made up in bales they may keep two or three 

 years, without stirring or giving them air. The island of Zante is the 

 chief place whence currants are brought ; in the Morea, or the Isth- 

 mus of Corinth, which was anciently the principal plantation, they 

 are no longer cultivated ; the jealousy of the Turks not allowing large 

 vessels to enter the gulf to take them off the collector's hands. They 

 grow on vines like our grapes ; except that the leaves are somewhat 

 thicker, and the grapes smaller ; they have no stone. The planters 

 gather them in August, dispose them in couches on the ground till dry, 

 then clean them, and lay them up in Magazines. On barrelling 

 them for sending abroad, they have people to tread them close, that 

 they may keep the better. Zante produces enough yearly to load five 

 or six vessels ; Cephalonia three or four ; and the other islands one. 

 The Zantiots know but little of the use we make of them. 



CUTIS. The skin, in anatomy, is that strong thick covering 

 which envelopes the whole external surface of animals. It is com- 

 posed chiefly of two parts ; a thin white elastic layer on the outside, 

 which is called the epidermis, or cuticle ; and a much thicker layer, 

 composed of a great many fibres, closely interwoven, and disposed in 

 different directions ; this is called the cutis, or true skin. 



CYCLE. A perpetual circulation of the same parts of time. 

 The cycle of the moon is a period of nineteen solar years, equivalent 

 to nineteen lunar years and seven intercalary months ; at the end of 

 every nineteen years, the new and full moons happen at very nearly 

 the same times of the year. The ancients discovered this, and reck- 

 oned the cycle of the moon so that it terminated the year before the 

 Christian era. This cycle was marked with letters of gold, thence 

 called the Golden Number, to find which, add one to the date of the 

 year, say 1829, will make 1830, which, divided by nineteen, will 

 produce ninety-six cycles, and there remain six, the Golden Number 

 for 1829, which shows that the moon is in the sixth year of the lunar 

 cycle. It should be, however, observed, that this cycle of the moon 

 only holds true for three hundred and twelve years ; for though the 

 new moons return to the same day after nineteen years, yet not to the 

 same time of the day, but nearly an hour and a half sooner ; which 

 error in three hundred and twelve years amounts to an entire day. 

 Yet those who were employed in reforming the calendar, went on the 

 supposition that the cycles returned precisely the same forever. The 

 use of this cycle in the ancient calendar was to show the time of the 



