THE FARMER AT HOME. 247 



mercurial ointment has been newly spread. If fowls are provided 

 with a box containing sand, with a considerable portion of ashes, to 

 dust, or roll themselves in, they will not be lousy, or if they become 

 so, such a box will cure them. It is is said also, that, occasionally 

 boiled onions chopped or mashed with corn meal dough for feed, will 

 prevent their being lousy. 



LICHEN. The name for an extensive division of plants. They 

 appear in the form of thin flat crusts, covering rocks and the bark of 

 trees, or in foliaceous expansions, or branched like a shrub in minia- 

 ture, or sometimes only as a gelatinous mass, or a powdery substance. 

 They are called rock moss and tree moss, and some of the liverworts 

 are of this order. They also include the Iceland moss and the rein- 

 deer moss ; but are entirely distinct from the true mosses. 



LIGAMENTS. Strong, tendinous, inelastic, glistening bodies, 

 which surround the joints, and connect bones together, or strengthen 

 the attachments of various organs, or keep them in their places. 

 Every joint is surrounded by a capsular ligament ; the tendons at the 

 wrist and ankle are bound down by what are called the annular liga- 

 ments. Poupart's ligament, under which the great nerves, artery, 

 and vein pass out from the cavity of the abdomen to the fore part of 

 the inferior extremity, is merely the lower border of the descending 

 oblique muscle of the belly ; which tendon is stretched from the fore 

 part of the haunch-bone to the share-bone. In dislocations of joints 

 the capsular ligament is often broken. 



LIGHT. Without light, plants may be made to grow, but no 

 longer exhibit the verdure, the texture, or any of the properties of 

 health. Hereafter we shall probably learn, that while the atmos- 

 phere is contaminated by the respiration of animals, its purity is 

 restored by the vegetation of plants. But secluded from the light, 

 vegetables are no longer capable of converting a portion of the fixed 

 air to their own use, or of supplying the atmosphere with oxygen, on 

 which its importance to animal life, chiefly, if not entirely depends. 

 By the action of light, the carbon of the fixed air is interwoven with 

 the very texture of the plant, whereby it acquires a greater degree of 

 firmness, and becomes more valuable in the arts. Through its agency, 

 the aromatic and essential secretions are formed, and hence we find 

 them existing in perfection, only in countries which are favored with 

 the perpetual light of summer, or on elevated mountains, where the 

 rays of light meet with no obstruction. There we find the Nutmeg, 

 the Clove, the Cinnamon and the Peruvian barks, all designed to 

 increase the comforts, or diminish the sufferings of humanity ; and all 

 owing their chief excellences to the light of the sun. 



When prepared to investigate the geographical distribution of the 

 vegetable kingdom, we shall learn the powerful effects of these united 

 causes. Feeble and exhausted in Polar regions, vegetation acquires 

 strength as we approach towards the equator ; where its powers can 



