THE FARMER AT HOME. 255 



ink. Logwood is also found to have a considerable astringent virtue 

 as a medicine, and an extract of it is sometimes given with great 

 success in diarrhoeas. 



LUCERNE. This is one of the most common cultivated grasses 

 in the south of France, Spain, Italy, and on the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea generally, and has been a favorite from the earliest ages. 

 It grows when cultivated some two or three feet high, is perennial, 

 and flowers in June or July. Lucerne requires a deep and light soil, 

 with a free or porous sub-soil, and in good condition from cultivation. 

 It will not grow on all soils, like some of the clovers, and on a heavy 

 compact soil is sure to prove a failure. Lucerne is to be cultivated 

 much as the clovers, which it greatly resembles in product and quality, 

 except that when sown in drills, and hoed, as it sometimes is, it may 

 be kept in the ground a long time with increasing productiveness. 

 If sown broadcast, and left to take its chance, it is apt to be soon 

 crowded out by the grasses and hardier plants. It should be sown in 

 the spring, and from ten to sixteen pounds per acre may be used. It 

 does not arrive at its full growth and productiveness until the third 

 year, but it may be mown or cut from the first year. There is no 

 plant so well adapted to the soiling of animals, particularly the horse, 

 as it is early, grows rapidly, and is eminently wholesome and nutri- 

 tive. Perhaps there is no better feed for milk cows than lucerne. 

 When attempted in this country on the right soil and in a proper 

 manner, it has succeeded very well, but fears are entertained that in 

 the Northern States it will not be found as hardy as clover. 



LUNGS. The organs of respiration, situated in the cavity of the 

 chest. They are divided into lobes, of which the right side contains 

 three, and the left only two, in order to allow room for the heart and 

 great vessels. All the blood of the body passes through the lungs, in 

 order to be there exposed to the influence of the external air, by which 

 it undergoes a change necessary to make it salutary for the body, 

 which it is not, after once having circulated through it. The blood 

 circulates through the lungs always contained in vessels, and it is 

 believed to be exposed to the action of the air not directly, but through 

 the medium of thin vesicles, as the windpipe is continued by branches 

 continually getting smaller and smaller, till at last they end in points 

 too minute for sight. 



An organ of such importance as the lungs, so close to the moving 

 centre of action, so abundantly supplied with blood, and so delicate 

 in their own ultimate structure, may be easily supposed to be liable 

 to very numerous diseases, and those of the most dangerous kind. 

 Accordingly, a very large proportion of fatal diseases are those which 

 occur in the chest, either in the substances of the lungs themselves, 

 in the membranes that line theni) or in the numerous vessels that 

 ramify through them. Pleurisy, asthma, catarrh, consumption, spit- 

 ting of blood, are some of the dangerous or painful diseases of the 



