278 

 m ' J 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



MARCH W, lft34. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH 12, 1334. 



SPUING WORK. 



Manure. Different plants require different sorts 

 of manure, as well as greater or less quantities. 

 " It is certainly true that riling- is not the liest sort 

 of manure for a garden : it may be mixed with 

 other matter, and if very well rotted, and almost in 

 an earthy state, it may not lie amiss ; but if other- 

 wise used, it certainly makes the garden vegetables 

 coarse and gross, compared to what they are when 

 raised with the aid of ashes, lime and composts. 

 Resides dung creates innumerable weeds; it brings 

 the seeds of weeds along with it into the garden, 

 unless it first be worked in a hot-bed, the heat of 

 which destroys the vegetative quality of the seeds." 



Salt and lime are very efficient destroyers of 

 slugs, snails, grubs, &c. Lime spread over a soil 

 when it is hot or caustic, destroys insects and their 

 larvoe or eggs ; and when it becomes slack, and is 

 taken up, or held in solution by water, it becomes 

 a constituent of plants. " It is astonishing" (says 

 a writer in the Gardener's Magazine) " how igno- 

 rantly neglectful are the cultivators of the soil, 

 when their crops are devastated by slugs, not to 

 dress the soil so as to render its surface quite 

 white, during the promise of a few days of dry 

 weather, with caustic lime. It is instant de- 

 struction to every slug it falls upon, and those 

 whom it misses are destroyed by their coming in 

 contact with it, when moving search of food." 



Charcoal dust. Thomas Smith, a writer for 

 Loudon's Magazine observes, " For the last six- 

 years I have had most excellent crops of onions, 

 and not the least appearance of any infection. My 

 first experiment I made on a bed fifty feet long 

 and five feet wide, prepared in the usual way, one 

 half of the bed was dressed with charcoal dust 

 and the other half without it. The part on which 

 the dust was laid, had an excellent crop of onions, 

 it remained quite clean and free from disease, 

 while the part to which the dust was not applied, 

 was entirely destroyed by the grub and by moo- 

 diness," &c. He then relates another similar ex- 

 periment, with a similar result. The charcoal 

 dust was " spread upon the top of the ground in- 

 tended for onions, about half an inch thick before 

 the seed was sown (the ground being previously 

 well dug and manured,) and merely scuffled in 

 with the point of a spade, so as to mix the top soil 

 and charcoal dust together." 



" 'flu: charcoal dust ought to be kept quite dry, 

 which is easily done by placing it in a round heap 

 and covering it closely over with turf till it is 

 wanted." It likewise seems from experiments 

 made by the same gardener, that charcoal dust is 

 a remedy against " the clubbing in the roots of 

 cabbages." f 



Temperature of Soil. — There can be no doubt 

 rhat charcoal is not only useful as a manure, as an 

 antidote to the diseases and insects which injure 

 plants, but that it operates beneficially, by increas- 

 ing the warmth of the soil : " Many soils are pop- 

 ularly distinguished as cold: and the distinction, 

 though at first view it may appear to be founded 

 on prejudice is really just. 



" Some sorts are much more heated by the rays 

 of the sun, all other circumstances being equal, 



* CqbheU' English Gardener. 



I See N. E. Farmer, vol. vii. p. 351. 



than others ; ami soils brought to the same degree 

 of bent cool in different times, that is, some cool 

 much faster. 



" This property has been very little attended to 

 in a philosophical point of view ; yet it is of the 

 highest importance in agriculture. In general, 

 soils that consist principally of white clay are heat- 

 ed with difficulty ; but being usually very moist, 

 they retain their heat only for a short time. Chalks 

 are similar in one respect that they are heated with 

 difficulty but ; being drier they retain their heat 

 longer, less being consumed in causing the evapo- 

 ration of their moisture. 



" A black soil containing much soft vegetable 

 matter, is most heated by the sun and air ; and the 

 colored sods, and the sods containing much car- 

 bonaceous (coaly) matter, or ferrugineous matter 

 (matter impregnated with iron) exposed under 

 equal circumstances to the sun, acquire a much 

 higher temperature than pale-colored soil. 



" When soils are perfectly dry, those that most 

 readily become heateil by the solar rays, like wise cool 

 most rapidly; but I have ascertained by experiment, 

 that the darkest colored dry soil (that which con- 

 tains most abundance of animal or vegetable mat- 

 ter; substances which most facilitate the diminu- 

 tion of temperature,) when heated to the same de- 

 gree, provided it be within the common limits of 

 the effect of solar heat, will cool more slowly than 

 a wet pale soil, entirely composed of earthy mat- 

 ter. 



" Nothing can he more evident, than that the 

 genial heat of the soil, particularly in Spring, must 

 be of the highest importance to the rising plant. 

 As when the leavesure fully developed, the ground 

 is shaded ; and an injurious influence, which in 

 the summer might be expected from too great a 

 heat entirely prevented ; so that the temperature 

 of the surface, when bare and exposed to the sun, 

 affords at least one indication of the degrees of its 

 fertility ; and the thermometer may be sometimes 

 a useful instrument to the purchaser and improver 

 of land." 



WATER BURNERS. 



A Mr. Rutter, of London, has put into opera- 

 tion a plan for generating heat by the combustion 

 of water, converted into steam and mixed with 

 " bituminous, oleaginous, resinous, waxy and fatty 

 substances in a fluid state." A writer For the Lon- 

 don Mechanical Magazine gives the following re- 

 marks on this invention : 



I perceive by your last notice that Mr. Rutter is 

 preparing for publication a work on the application 

 of his new principle, and I beg to assure him that 

 he has my sincere wishes for the complete success 

 of his patent, &x. 



It occurred to me, that about fourteen years 

 since, in consequence of a paragraph which had 

 then met my eye, I had been induced to make the 

 following experiment: About equal portions of 

 common tar and water were put into a half-pint 

 glass retort, after which the orifice of the beak was 

 reduced, by drawing out at the table blowpipe, to 

 about one eighth of an inch diameter. The retort 

 being fixed over an argand lamp, the apparatus 

 was taken into my garden on a dark night, and the 

 contents of the retort brought to a state of brisk 

 ebullition. As soon as vapor issued with rapidity, 

 it light was applied, and in an instant 1 beheld a 

 jet of flame eight or nine inches in length, consti- 

 tuting a brilliant firework, the intense heat of 

 which was found capable of melting several refrac- 



tory mineral substances. I lay no claim to origin- 

 ality in this little experiment, which is precisely 

 the same in principle as Mr. Untter's method, and 

 this the following extract, which gave rise to my 

 experiment, will show : 



American Water-Burmer. — An apparatus, call- 

 ed the American Water-Burner, has been invented 

 by Mr. Morey, of New-Hampshire. It is a rough 

 blowpipe, but is applicable in many cases in place 

 of a furnace. Tar is intimately mixed with steam, 

 and made to issue from n small jet, in the manner 

 of an eolipile, and the stream of matter being ig- 

 nited, produces a flame of great size and intensity. 

 It appears that the water is partly decomposed to- 

 wards the middle of the jet, and that the heat is 

 thus increased by increasing the quantity of actWe 

 agents; but, whatever the exact effect, the water 

 is found to be useful in preventing the formation of 

 smoke, and increasing the combustion." — [New 

 Monthly Magazine, April, 1819.] 



Perhaps, Mr. Editor, you will indulge me in a 

 few more remarks. In the autumn of 1827, a sci- 

 entific friend and myself succeeded in beautifully 

 illuminating a very large room, used as our labora- 

 tory, with gas obtained from the decomposition of 

 resin ; and being at the same time occupied with 

 the oxydrogen blowpipe, in producing intense 

 light by means of lime and other substances, it oc- 

 curred to us that the light thus furnished would 

 prove admirably adapted to the purposes of illu- 

 minating objects usually exnibited by the solar mi- 

 croscope. In the course of a few weeks, subse- 

 quently, the illuminating power of rosin gas, and 

 the principle of applying the light of lime to the 

 microscope, were practically demonstrated in a 

 lecture before the Canterbuiy Philosophical Insti- 

 tution. I believe it was early in the following 

 year that I was informed a patent had been grant- 

 ed for lighting a town on the continent with "resin 

 gas," and every body knows that, during the pres- 

 ent year, the " gas microscope" has been brought 

 out as one of the popular exhibitions of the me- 

 tropolis. 



Now I feel convinced, Mr. Editor, that both 

 these plans were originated and carried into effect 

 independently of any thing made public by me ; 

 and just as well am I satisfied, notwithstanding the 

 extract previously given, that the principle of gene- 

 rating heat, now made known, is as purely'original 

 with Mr. Rutter. Coincidences of this kind have 

 frequently happened, and the more men are taught 

 to think for themselves, the more frequently they 

 will happen, which, after all, is nothing more than 

 another proof of the value of scientific acquire- 

 ments. Mr. Rutter, I feel persuaded, will not mis- 

 trust my motives in offering these observations to 

 his notice: had I not done so, it is very probable 

 some one else would shortly have made him ac- 

 quainted with the " American. Water Burner," and 

 perhaps might unjustly accuse hiin of plagiarism at 

 the same time. 



I am, Sir, very truly yours, W. II. Weekes, 



Sandwich, October IS, 1833. 



Mr. Morey, the inventor of the American Water 

 Burner, is now in Boston, improving his invention, 

 which he has already brought to what, on a cursory 

 view, appears to us a high degree of practical utility. 

 The applications of the principle of the invention 

 so far as we have seen them, have been confined 

 to the production of light, in which a mixture of 

 spirits of turpentine and water burnt in a gaseous 

 state is a substitute for oil. The light thus pro- 



