234 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



fatal precision. It makes frequent depredations on broods of young 

 chickens, and furnishes hereby an interesting spectacle of maternal 

 affection and courage in the hen. From these conflicts the kite 

 sometimes retires worsted. 



KETCHUP. This is a well known preparation from the mush- 

 room and other plants, used as a condiment for flavoring, differs 

 greatly in its ingredients and manufacture, according to the chief 

 substance which gives it a name. The best articles for it after 

 mushroom, are tomato and walnut. To the juice of these vegetable 

 substances, there is added vinegar with a seasoning of cloves, pepper, 

 ginger, pimento, salt, and whatever else may be deemed agreeable to 

 the taste. 



LABOR SAYING MACHINES. Montesquieu somewhere 

 regrets the introduction of the use of water mills for grinding corn, 

 instead of the hand mills formerly in use, as it threw a great many 

 laborers out of employment, besides diverting the water from the pur- 

 poses of irrigation. Upon this principle of throwing laborers out of 

 employment, the English weavers were opposed to the use of the 

 power looms. It is not remarkable that laborers themselves, who, 

 for a time, feel the inconveniences of the introduction of any improve- 

 ment, should oppose its introduction ; but it is singular that any man 

 of enlarged and philosophical views should fall into such a notion. 

 Nobody certainly would think it a misfortune to a community, that, 

 in consequence of some improvement in agriculture, the same labor 

 would produce a greater crop of grain ; on the contrary, every one 

 consents to the praise bestowed, by Johnson, upon the man who 

 makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. And 

 an improvement in machinery, whereby the same labor will produce 

 twice the quantity of cloth, is precisely the same in its general effects 

 upon the condition of the community, as an improvement in 

 agriculture. 



Improvements in agriculture are much promoted by labor-saving 

 implements. Much of the time that was formerly consumed in the 

 use of the spade is now prevented by the application of the plough. 

 What formerly occupied a stout laboring man a month can now be 

 done by a good span of horses in two days. There is perhaps as 

 much gained by the horse-drill in sowing and planting seed, over the 

 former tedious processes of doing it. The cultivator between the rows 

 of corn instead of the hoe is productive of similar advantage. So is 

 the horse power applied to reaping, raking hay, thrashing and win- 

 nowing grain, and sawing wood. Indeed, in whatever department 

 of labor, whether by machinery in the mechanic arts, or by imple- 

 ments in agriculture, the individual is a common benefactor, who 

 enables one man to perform the labor that previously required a plu- 

 rality of men. By this means the quantity of products is increased 

 and the cost of them diminished in a corresponding ratio. 



