1! 



THE FARMER'S MON THLY VISI TOR. 



No artificial coloring. 



To nwke butter appear more beautiful, some that 

 has been presented at agricultural exhib.t.ons has 

 cained pj) artificial beauty, as ladies sometimes do 

 tho are deficient in the real article, by making use 

 ind mixing coloring matter with it. Any paint- 

 er's druc used for such a purpose must be deleteri- 

 ous: the use of the carrot fed out to cows might 

 not injure the butter. But the pri^test of every lov- 

 er of o-ood butter should be entered against every 

 coloring matter mixed in butter to set off its beau- 

 ty- " - . 



Remedy for turnip tops. 



If anv iU flavor to the butter is apprehended from 

 the coWs having eaten turnip tops or other green 

 crops communicating taste, the addition nf one- 

 ei.rhtli boiling water poured into the milk before 

 settiivr it for the cream will effectually remove it. 

 Anotircr method of removing the taste of turnips 

 is to warm the cream and afterwards pour it into 

 a vessel of cold water, from which the cream is to 

 be skimmed as it rises upon t!-.e surface, and the 

 cause of the unpleasant (aste will be left in be 

 water. It is now generally understood that the 

 toots «?o«e.of turnips will communicate to the milK 

 no bad taste. 



neceptacles for Slilk, temperature, &c. 



The usual receptacles for milk when first taken 

 from the cow are tin or earthen pans. Sir Jolin 

 Sinclair recor,-imends vessels made from cast iron, 

 turned over with a coat of tin to prevent the mdk 

 from coming in contact with the iron. In these tne 

 milk is said to cool so rapidly that the fecottisli 

 farmers- wives aflirm that they throw out one third 

 more cream from a given quantity of milk. 1 ne 

 best vessels now used in New England are believ- 

 ed to be double tin pans. These should be before 

 eacli new setting scoured witli hot water and rins- 

 ed with cold, and afterwards dried in Uie warm sun. 

 Doet. Deane is of opinion that the temperature 

 of the atmosphere where milk is set should be as 

 low as fifty-five to fifty degrees of Fahrenheit. Ice, 

 which is becoming a common as it will be found an 

 easily preserved article of use, will be a most valu- 

 ble item in d.airy management in the hottest sea- 

 «on of summer, especially in the butter making 



process. , , , -n 



Tlie experience of the good dairy woman will 

 enable lier better to instruct her pupils m the art 

 of mnkinT and preserving good butter than instruc- 

 tion from'tlie books. She will readily know that 

 part of our advice which is good and will follow it-. 

 if any part of our suggestions is inexpedient, 

 who is a better judge than she ? 



A<i exhortation to the Fair. 



Morrain of Cattle. 



Of diseases of the inflammatory character, tliere 

 is probably none so f.ital as minrain. However it 

 may commence, whatever part it may attack, stiff 

 it tends to a speedy and fatal termination. 1 his is 

 unquestionably an inflammatory disease, audits 

 seat in the foot, in the fore quarter, side or bind 

 quarter, docs not alter its character. When it fire- 

 vails as an epidemic, it is like all epidemics which 

 attack man, more rapid in its course, and more cer- 

 tainly fatal in its termination, it hurries through 

 its regular st.nges witliout giving the sufferer even 

 temporarv repose or intervals of abatement. As it 

 commonl'v prevails in New l-:ngland, it occurs in 

 sporadic cases, and confines its attacks mostly to the 

 Voumr and thrifty cattle which have been turned 

 'into a°rich pasture in the spring. Tlie first intima- 

 tion to the owner of a thriving herd of yeartings. 

 that they are becoming too plethoric, la the tind- 

 in-.- alrcadv dead, one of tlie finest of the herd.— 

 When this is the ease, it should lead to a carefuf 

 examination of the remainder, to ascertain wheth- 

 er there are amonw them any tlrit are lame or ill, or 

 apparently of too full habit. If one or more be ail- 

 ino- the fi'rft remedy to be applied is blood-letting. 

 The vein in the neck is to he freely opened, that 

 blood may flow in a full stream. The quantity to 

 be taken 'depends on the circumstances of the ease, 

 or the procuress which the disease has made, and it 

 is safer tolet it flow till the animal staggers and 

 his pulse fiutters under the finger. This is to be 

 followed by a pound and a half of epsom salts dis- 

 solved in thin gruel or warm water. If all appear 

 in a heahhv state, a safe and prudent course will be 

 to turn them all into short fired for one or two 

 weeks, and, during tliat time, mix with their salt a 

 quantity of sulphate of magnesia. Such a course 

 will remove a predisposition to the disease, it one 

 exists. The latter course may be pursued even 

 when no disease has appeared. A short dry pas- 

 ture reserved for this jmrpose, where they can be 

 exercised, (for cattle do become indolent,) will be 

 of great value to the cultivator of this kind of 

 stock, and save yearly one or more from falling vic- 

 tims to this disease. — Prof. Emmons. 



of the Devonshire breed, and probably diff^er as lit- 

 tle from them as possilile, under the climate and 

 mode of treatniriil lli'y have met with. It is not 

 supposed that any are of a pure blood, except those 

 recently imported. Where care has been taken of 

 VOunT stock, i. e., the ordinary care of a good hus- 

 bandman, it is believed Ihat the cattle in tins state 

 have as much power and as much speed at the 

 ploucrli, as any in the world, even as the best of the 

 Devonshire in tlieir own co'intry. It remains to be 

 show-n by experiment, liow much the present race 

 may be improved by extra care, or whatadvanlages 

 are to accrue from crossing with the best English 

 stocks. It is the opinion irf the writer, that the 

 most feasible course for the New England farmer, 

 is to improve the presejit mixed race. This race is 

 inured to the climate, is not very deficient in good 

 points, attains a good size ; the males are good 

 workers, and the females are not deficient in milk. 

 They are a race, like the New England people, 

 who, thouah descended from the English, retain 

 but few oflheir characteristics, and having acquir- 

 ed some new ones, are, on the whole, not inferior 

 to the origin3.1 stock. A line field is openeii to the 

 husbandman, for the imjirovement of the stock now 

 on his farm, not by expensive, uncertain importa- 

 tion of cattle from a climate essentially different 

 from ours, but by selecting the best of his present 

 stock for breeders.— /'(-«/. Einmoiis. 



Our fears are, not that there are many excellent 

 dairy women in the land, but that the benefits of 

 their knowledge and practice will be lost in the 

 new o-eneration that is springing up. Hundreds 

 and tliousands of farmers' daughters leave the 

 homes of their mothers and seek other employ- 

 ments as if with a disrelish of that winch may he 

 practically more useful. Good dairy-women are 

 becoininT' more and more scarce. The occupation 

 is stripped by the demand for young women as m- 

 ■tructers of'youth, as operatives in factories, as 

 milliners or sewers, uhoe-binders or straw-braidcrs, 

 or in some other merely mechanical occupation.— 

 How short do such as are thus employed come of 

 the qualifications of the virtuous maid who obtains 

 the best part of her education under the roof ot lier 

 own father, from the instruction of the mother who 

 knows how to do every thing coining within her 

 province as the wife of a thriving farmer-who is 

 entirely at home in all that pertains to the dairy, 

 the economical use and due preparation of articles 

 of food and clothing, and who suffers none of lier 

 household to "eat the bread of idleness? 



If not to the rising fair generation, to whom shall 

 we look for the hands that are to supply so impor- 

 tant a portion of subsistence as the products of the 

 dairy ' The fanner may keep his forty, htty or 

 hundred cows: if there "be no help-meet to over- 

 gee and lead in the preparation of the inilk after it 

 (roes to the dairy room— if there be no female to 

 prepare the ves«ls, none to direct in th(i straining 

 and setting of the milk, the extraction and disposi- 

 tion of the'^crcam. tlie churninir into butter, the sep- 

 aration from the butter-milk, the clean and perfect 

 aaltin..- down— if all this is expected of men, and 

 not of° women; how miserably shall we hereafter 

 drop away in the produce of a most profitable and 

 most useful article in tlie production of the farm at 

 that precise time when there is the most sure en- 

 couragement for the fi.rmefr to enter upon and per- 

 ■evere in the business of the dairy .- 



Valrc of blood-luting in treatment of Cattle. 

 Bleeding is the first remedy and the only reme- 

 dy whicli will be effectual,as without it, otherrem- 

 edies will not act with sufficient promptitude to 

 save the patient. Bleeding prepares the way for 

 the use of other means, which, without it, 

 would not only afford no relief, but miglit increase 

 oppression. Bleeding arrests, for a time, the pro- 

 gress of the disease, removes the hindrance to the 

 free circulation of the fluids, brings a temporary 

 respite or mitigation ; it does not cure, but opens 

 a prospect of curing, and the final termination \vill 

 depend much on the course pursued during tlie in- 

 terval of relaxation. 

 ' To tliese -.vho do not understand the effect of 

 bleedinj. or other reuiedics, or who do not know 

 what changes to expect from their operation, either 

 singly or climbined, I state farther.— There are two 

 kin"ds of changes which follow bloodletting, both 

 of which arc favorable ; they depend on the previ- 

 ous state of the circulatory system. If it is oppress- 

 ed from engorn-emeHt ; bleeding, (if its effects are 

 favorable, )"viri produce a more frequent, fuller, 

 and rounder pulse, or the artery will be more ex- 

 panded, seem larger in circumferanee ; but if the 

 pulse, previous to bleeding, is Jjounding, frequent, 

 or Iiard, it will be less bounding, less frequent, and 

 softer. The system, in the first case, will be re- 

 lieved of a load, under which it could not freely 

 act -, in the last, there are abstracted from the cir- 

 culation, fluids, which by their over-stimulating 

 effects tend rapidly to the extinction of the vital 

 principle, or the destruction of some vital organ. 

 The first state, is one frcceding reaction, and in 

 which nature requires assistance to develope ; the 

 latter is one of rciie'.ion, and requires moderating, 

 before any of the vital organs suffer from structur- 

 al derangement. Tlie first state is one, much like 

 that which follows a blow on the head, the whole 

 system is laboring under a depression, and this may 

 be so great, that the circulation in the capillaries is 

 wholly impeded. The appearances af\pr death in 

 such a case, are black extravasations in the diseased 

 part, or decided mortification. The la.^t is more 

 like tlie excitation from stimulating liquids, and 

 ends in the suppuration of some part, on which the 

 disease falls. Sometimes some organs are found in 

 a state of mortification, and others in suppuration, 

 or both states are found in the same organ.— Pro/. 

 Emmons. 



For the Fiiriner's Moiilhly Visitor. 

 Value of Birds. 



Me HiLi,,— I was much pleased, that in your 

 first volume i.f the Visitor, yen t. ok so much inter- 

 est in the preservation of the small birds. Without 

 their aid in destroying the innumerable insects that 

 prey uj.on the products of the farmer, agriculture 

 in a few years would have to be abandoned. The 

 rapidity with which many kinds of insects are 

 produced is almost beyond conception, and were it 

 not for the check put to it by insectiverous birds, it 

 would be in vain to sow or cultivate the soil. And 

 many think it doubtful policy, in giving a bounty 

 for the destruction of crows and foxes. 



The crow, it is true, sometimes plucks up the 

 newly planted corn ; but where he pulls up one 

 blade of corn, he probably pulls up a hundred of 

 the large white worm. So of the fox, he carries off^ 

 a few lambs, and sometimes a stray goose, but his 

 principal food in the summer season is the large 

 white worm, beetle, bugs, mice, moles, Ac, which 

 probably more than compensate for the few lambs 

 they take. 



Could the exact amount of damage done by 

 insects to the various crops of grass, jfra-ns and 

 fruits, in a single county, for one year, be ascer- 

 tained, it would be astnu-shing. Two years ago last 

 season many fields tint produced a good crop of 

 hay the year before were almost barren : scarcely 

 a blade of grass was left on many square rods, and 

 the roots were so completely cut an inch or two be- 

 neath the surface, by the large white worm, that 

 the turf mio-ht be rolled up like a carpet. 



Sometimes whole fields ef corn are nearly de- 

 stroyed by the grub, or the wire worm : orchards 

 are defoliated by the canker w-.)nn or catterp:llar ; 

 and fields of most premising wheat are destroyed 

 by the wheat fly or weevil. . 



The natural history of the various kinds of inju- 

 rious insects is not sufficiently studied. No doubt 

 nearly every kind inijlit have its life or history 

 traced through all its various changes, habits, food, 

 &c., and proliably ways and means discovered to 

 irreatly lessen their numbers and cheek their ray- 

 aires. 



In a late number of the New England Farmer, 

 tl!"' editorsays, "We as yet know of but one efler- 

 tual remedy against the canker worm — that is, the 

 encouragement of the birds. In our code of penal 

 justice, killing a small bird should be placed next 

 to killing a elTild. We were assured tlie last sum- 

 mer thalatthe beautifully cultivated district in the 

 south part of West Cambridge, abounding in fruit, 

 they were entirely free from canker worms, wliifo 

 in Old Cambridge the orchards suflered severely. 

 The great security w-hich they found was in tiie 

 encoiuao-ement and preservation of the birds. A 

 crunner In West Cambridge would be in as much 

 dano-er as an abolitionist in South Carolina." 

 F?b. 12, IS-IO. L. B. 



New England Cattle. 



The varieties of cattle in New England arc ev. 

 dently numerous. The red catlle bear the marUa I 



Geological Definitions. 



The primitive earths are four; clay, sand, lime, 

 and magnesia. 



Clay is called liy geologists, alumina, alumine, or 



aro-illaceous earth. 



Sand is called silex, silicious earth, earth of 



flints. , ,1 J 



Lime, as it exists in the soil, is commonly called 



calcareous earth. The term calcareous, is not prop; 



