246 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



browned, some butter, and a few onions roasted in butter, are added, 

 also salt ; they are tht>n boiled half an hour more. A good soup may 

 also be made of them. Some persons soften the lentils, before cook- 

 ing, in cold water. Purified rain water is best to cook them in. In 

 the Archipelago, they are one of the principal articles of **!. To 

 fatten pigs, lentils are excellent, and, given with other food, increase 

 the milk of cows. 



LETTUCE. A smooth, herbaceous, annual plant, containing a 

 milky juice, which has been cultivated from remote antiquity, and is 

 in general use as a salad. The original locality is unknown. The 

 stem grows to the height of about two feet, and bears small pale- 

 yellow flowers ; the inferior leaves are sessile, and undulate on the 

 margin. The young plant only is eaten, as it is narcotic and poison- 

 ous when in flower. Twenty species of lettuce are known, from 

 various parts of the globe, and one or more of them inhabit the 

 United States. 



LICE. There is scarce an animal that does not nourish, under 

 peculiar circumstances, on its skin, hair, wool, or if a bird, among its 

 feathers, some kind of lice. Some have even more than one kind, as 

 the horse, where one kind lives in the short hair, and another in the 

 mane. The causes are various which are deemed favorable to the 

 production and increase of these parasites. Domestic animals kept 

 dirty and not curried ; filthy unwholesome stables ; dirt and sweat 

 allowed to accumulate on the skin, or contact with one already in- 

 fected, are named as causes. But experience shows that lice prefer 

 animals reduced by hunger, disease, or bad food, and they frequently 

 appear after malignant or inveterate diseases have left the animal 

 weak and debilitated. On the horse, they more generally fix on the 

 mane arid tail, but if numerous, spread over the whole animal ; on 

 the ox. they are found on all parts ; they run over the whole body of 

 the sheep, and swarm on every part of the bodies of swine. Animals 

 attacked, rub off the hair, wool, and even the skin, in their annoy 

 ance, and fall away rapidly from the abstraction of blood and juices, 

 and the restless state in which they are kept. 



For the cure of animals infested with lice, some kind of mercurial 

 ointment is most to be depended upon ; though there are vegetable 

 washes, such as a decoction of black hellebore and marsh tea, which 

 will kill these vermin. It has been said, where they are not numer- 

 ous, sifting fine sand over the animal, would speedily drive them off. 

 Snuff, or a decoction of tobacco, is also used with success. For cattle, 

 Youatt recommends the common scab ointment of sheep one part of 

 strong mercurial ointment arid five parts of lard, as a cure for this 

 disease. If a little of this is well rubbed in, instead of a good deal 

 spread over the hair, there will be no danger of salivation, and the cure 

 will be speedy. Infected animals should be kept separate from well 

 ones, both to prevent infection, and the danger of licking where the 



