No. 12. 



Hessian Fhj. — Mechanics. — LigJilning Rods. 



379 



by curiosity to call at his house, none ever 

 left it without having reason to extol tiie 

 liberality of its owner. Many interestinij 

 anecdotes are related of his humanity towards 

 the various orders of animals. He con- 

 tinually deprecated the atrocious barbarities 

 practised by butchers and drovers ; sliowinir 

 lay examples on his own farm, the most 

 pleasinrr instances of docility in the animals 

 under his care. 



He departed this life on Thursday, Octo- 

 ber 1, 1795, after a tedious illness, which 

 he bore with the philosophical fortitude that 

 ever distingfuished his character. 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Hessian Fly. 



Sir, — It appears by the papers, that where 

 the street-manure from the'city of Philadel- 

 phia has been used as a dressing for wheat, 

 the Hessian fly has not made its appearance 

 the present year ; and that experiments have 

 been made to show, that when used by the 

 side of the common farm-manure, it has al- 

 ways operated as an antidote to its ravages, 

 "while the disease has been uniformly found 

 in crops raised by long muck. The writer in 

 the Philadelphia Courier says, that farmers, 

 having made these experiments, are of opinion 

 that the ])reventive properties are contained 

 in the anthracite ashes, with which the city 

 street-manure abounds. Now, I am not one 

 of those, but I believe, that until we alter 

 our course of crops, and mode of manuring 

 with unfcrmerded dung, we shall continue to 

 have our fields covered with blignt, in every 

 variety of appearance, fly, mildew, rust, 

 smut, &c., whenever the atmospheric changes 

 from cold to heat, and heat to cold, fall upon 

 us, as they have done the present season. 

 Our crops by such manuring are rendered 

 weak and flashy ; and our lands, made light 

 and spongy, are very apt to be operated upon 

 by the frosts of winter, to a ruinous extent. 

 How is it, that every farmer does not know 

 that wheat requires a close, compact seed- 

 bed, and tenacious, yet healthy sub-soil 1 

 But they most assuredly all know that they 

 are doing what in their power lies to over- 

 turn this order of things, and render their 

 wheat tilths as light and spongy as possible, 

 by fallowing after oats, and dunging and 

 liming that fallow ! No need of wonder, 

 after doing so much to foster premature 

 growth, that the crops should suffer by cold 

 blasts in the spring, and be filled with dis- 

 ease and all kinds of animalcules in the fol- 

 lowing summer — more of this hereafter. 

 An old Subscriber. 



Frugality and industry are handmaids to fortune. 



Itlechanics. 



Every carpenter must know before he 

 erects a house, how to lay oil' tiie sills in an 

 exact square. He accordingly measures ofT 

 eight feet from the end of one sill, and there 

 makes a mark ; he then measures oif six 

 feet on the sill lying at right angles with the 

 first, and makes another mark ; he then lays 

 on his ten foot pole, one end of it squaring 

 with the first mark, and if tlie othir end of 

 it does not exactly meet the second mark, he 

 causes the sill to be moved in or out, until it 

 exactly squares with it. The figure which 

 he thus makes in marking off his sills, and 

 in laying down his ten foot pole, is a right- 

 angled triangle A, B, C, the right angle or 

 square corner being at B. 



A 8 feet sill. B 



Now, unless the line A C be ten feet long, 

 when the other two are eight and six re- 

 spectively, the corner B will not be a square 

 corner, for it is found by mathematicians, 

 that in every right-angled triangle, the longest 

 line — the line opposite to the right angle 

 when squared — is just equal to the squares 

 of the other two, the lines A B and B C. 

 This is the reason why carpenters adopt this 

 rule to lay their sills square — eight squared 

 is sixty-four, and six squared is thirty-six — 

 both together equal to one hundred — ten 

 squared being one hundred — ten times ten. 

 — Boston Cultivator. 



Lightning Rods. 



We beg to call the attention of our cor- 

 respondent, Publicola, to the highly valuable 

 and interesting paper on this subject, by Ob- 

 server, at page 73 of the third volume of 

 the Cabinet, where may be found all the 

 observation and experience that may be ne- 

 cessary to form a correct opinion upon this 

 very interesting branch of science. Various 

 have been the instances where buildings 

 have been struck by lightning when guarded 

 by conducting rods, but whether these have 

 been properly constructed is a very interest- 

 ing question. A valued friend asks, whe- 

 ther the size of the rod be of importance to 



