THE FARMER AT HOME. 427 



by proper machines, provided with a number of flails, or other parts 

 answering the same purpose, made to move by the power of water, 

 wind, or horses. By this means the business of thrashing is found to 

 be performed cheaper, more expeditiously, and with less damage to 

 the health of the thrasher ; for it is well known that thrashing with 

 flails is laborious in the extreme, and the dust constantly arising is in- 

 jurious to the lungs. Thrashing machines have become quite numer- 

 ous, each inventor endeavoring to obviate some fault in previous ones, 

 and to introduce some new advantage not before accomplished. A 

 correspondent of the American Agriculturist, living in Tornpkins 

 county, (N. Y.,) says : " Since I have owned one of Allen's machines, 

 it has not cost me one bushel in twenty to thrash my grain. With 

 two light horses, by changing them every hour, and with two men and 

 a boy, I thrashed forty-five bushels of wheat in half a day. There 

 are but few farmers who cannot thrash all of their grain on their rainy 

 and leisure days, and incur very little expense, if they have a machine 

 of their own. 



THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. The surface of the earth, and 

 of all bodies with which we are acquainted, is supposed to contain or 

 possess a power of exciting or exhibiting a certain quantity of an ex- 

 ceeding subtle agent called the electric fluid. The quantity usually 

 belonging to any surface is called its natural state, and it then pro- 

 duces no sensible effects ; but when any surface ^becomes possessed of 

 more, or less, than its natural quantity, it is electrified, and it then 

 exhibits a variety of peculiar and surprising phenomena ascribed to 

 the power called electric. 



If you take a stick of sealing-wax and rub it on the sleeve of your 

 coat, it will have the power of attracting small pieces of paper, or 

 any other light substances, when held near them. If a clean and 

 dry glass tube be briskly rubbed with the hand, or with a piece of 

 flannel, and then presented to any small light substances, it will im- 

 mediately attract and repel them alternately for a considerable time. 

 The tube is then said to be excited. If an excited glass tube, in a 

 dark room, be brought within about half an inch of the finger, a lucid 

 spark w r ill be seen between the finger and the tube, accompanied with 

 a snapping noise, and a peculiar sensation of the finger. Dry flannel 

 clothes, when handled in the dark, frequently exhibit a sparkling ap- 

 pearance, attended with the same kind of noise that is heard in the 

 experiment of the glass tube. 



When any body is possessed of more than its natural quantity of 

 electricity, it is said to be positively electrified ; and when possessed 

 of less than its natural quantity, it is said to be negatively electrified. 

 If two substances come in contact, one charged positively and the 

 other negatively with electricity, so much of the fluid passes from the 

 former to the latter, as to produce an equilibrium. Certain bodies 

 have the power of transmitting electricity from one surface to another, 



