224 TIIE FARMER AT HOME. 



manner journeys of considerable length ^with tolerable facility. They 

 will travel, with a rider on their back, fifteen or sixteen hours in a 

 day, at the rate of six miles an hour. So it has been stated by early 

 writers ; but later ones reduce their daily travel to half that distance 

 Their action is particularly fine nothing like that of our cattle, with 

 the sideway circular of their hind legs. They are very active in 

 travelling and leaping, bringing their hind legs under them in a 

 straight line like as the horse does. Their most common color is a 

 light ashy gray, passing into a cream color 01 milk white ; but it is 

 not unfrequently marked with various shades of red or brown, and 

 occasionally it becomes perfectly black. 



INDIAN CORN, or MAIZE. .This grain is too well known to 

 require a particular description. The native country of it remains 

 undetermined. It is usually attributed to America, where it was 

 cultivated by the aborigines at the time of the discovery; but no 

 botanist has hitherto found it growing wild in any part of the new 

 continent ; and most certainly it did not so exist in any portion of the 

 territory of the United States. It is also certain that its culture did 

 not attract notice in Europe, Asia, or the north of Africa, till after the 

 voyage of Columbus. It was unknown to ancient Greek and 

 Roman writers, and is not mentioned by the earlier travellers who 

 visited China, India, and other parts of Asia and Africa, and who 

 were very minute in describing the productions of the countries they 

 visited. 



Indian corn is now very extensively cultivated, not only in 

 America, but throughout a great part of Asia and Africa, and also in 

 several countries in the south of Europe, as in Spain and Italy. In 

 many of the provinces of France, it forms almost exclusively the sus- 

 tenance of the inhabitants. It requires a warm climate, a rich soil, 

 and goo(i*|^ltivation. Under these circumstances it yields a large 

 crop. As^eiierally as it is produced in this country, the valley of the 

 Mississippi is perhaps more favorable to its growth than any other 

 part of the world. It is there cultivated with so much ease, requires 

 so little labor, arid the yield is so great to the acre, that there is no 

 fixing limits to the amount which will there be raised in coming time. 



IRON. One of the most useful and abundant, arid one of the 

 first metals that was known and worked. This metal is easily oxi- 

 dized, but is infusible, except by an intense heat ; it is, however, 

 malleable at a less degree of heat, and several pieces may be united 

 into one mass, by a process called welding. Iron is the only metal 

 that is susceptible of magnetic attraction. Pure iron is very rarely to 

 be found ; the principal varieties of iron ate the cast or pig iron, or 

 that which is immediately extracted from the ore ; wrought iron, that 

 which has gone through the process of melting in a furnace ; and 

 steel, that which has been heated in charcoal, and hardened by its 

 combination with carbon. ' rl 



