MEW ENGLAND FARM: 



PUBLI.SIIEU BY GEO. C. BARRETT, NO. 52, NORTH MARKET STREET, (at the Ac.khi i.i, kit VV^i , .,_■,-. ,,. FESSENDEtf, Ef)JTOR. 



VOL. XI I. 



HOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JULY 9, 1834. 



NO. 52. 





The flavor is delicious, and it contains much more 

 farinaceous matter. There is of course consider- 

 able siviii; of oats, and the expense of kjln-dry - 

 &c. ami one peck contains more nutritions 

 food for a horse, than three pecks of common 

 The produce is most astonishing, the avcr- 

 i b 'twenty-six barrels, of fourteen stoi 

 the Irish acre, the exact quantity grown by Mr. 

 y on one acre. It was not sown till the -1th 

 of May, 1830, and was reaped early in August in 

 the same year. — Ii is remarkably hardy, and well 

 adapted to this climate. — London Periodical. 



GRINDSTONES ON FRICTION ROLLERS. 



The hanging of grindstones on Friction Hollers, 

 and moving them with a foot-treadle is found to 

 he a great improvement. The rollers almost an- 

 nihilate friction, and as it is very easy to give them 

 motion by the foot, the labor of one man is saved, 

 and the person who is grinding can govern the 

 stone more to his mind by having the complete 

 control of his work. 



Grindstones, hung in this maimer, are coming 

 daily more and more into use; and froru the fre- 

 quency with which they are employed, the appa- 

 ratus sketched above, may well he numbered with 

 the most important implements for facilit; : the 

 labors of the farmer as well as many classes of 

 meahanics. 



Stones of different sizes, and fitted as above 

 may he obtained at the Agricultural Warehouse, 

 Nos. 51 & -3:2 North Market street, Boston. 



For the New-England Farmer. 

 SKINLESS OATS. 



New York, June 28th, 1S34. 



Mr. Editor, For the benefit of the agricultural 

 interests of my native State, I enclose this slip 

 taken from a stray paper, which, I hope may 

 prove of some benefit to your valuable Society 

 of Agriculture. J. Brown. 



Skinless Oats. At a late meeting of the War- 

 wickshire Agricultural Society, a specimen of the 

 Avenaiva Farina, or skinless oat was produced by 

 the Rev. Mr. Knott, which had been plucked that 

 morning out of a piece of ground belonging to that 

 gentleman at Wormloighton. It was produced 

 from seed furnished to him by Mr. Trucker, of 

 Heanton, Pimebardon, near Barnstable, Devon- 

 shire. According to the account furnished by 

 that gentleman, it was grown in the season of 1830, 

 for the first time it was ever produced in Great 

 Britain, by Thomas Bronzy, Esq. of Clehemen 

 Hall, who obtained the seed through a friend of his 

 at Rotterdam, whither it was imported from Shan- 

 tag a remote district in China, and was quite un- 

 known to Europeans till within these three years. 

 The advantages which this extraordinary and val- 

 uable grain possesses over all other kinds of oats 

 are numerous: When threshed from the sheaf it 

 is exactly like oatmeal, and it is fit for immediate 

 use for culinary purposes, and every other sort 

 which oatmeal is consumed for, the grain being 

 quite free from every particle of rind and husk. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 THE CICADA. 

 Ma. Fessenbei? — Much alarm has been created 

 among those whose reliance for a livelihood is on 

 the fruits of the earth, by the annunciation that the 

 land is this year to be overspread with Locusts. 

 Many stories of the devastations committed by this 

 fifth plague of Pharaoh have been collected and 

 circulated ; and it is doubtless impressed on the 

 minds of multitudes, that we are, in reality, about 

 to see this direful scourge of the East — that the 

 earth is to be covered and the land darkened, and 

 •every herb of the land and all the fruit of the trees 

 is to be eaten, and that no green thing is to remain 

 in the trees or in the herb of the field. All this 

 honest misrepresentation and consequent panic, 

 only shows how much there is in a name. For 

 these stories are in no important particular appli- 

 cahlq to our insect. At your request, therefore, I 

 offer the following, as the best account I can give 

 of them. And why does not the entomologist do 

 as great a service to the public, by being able to 

 to dissipate their groundless fears, as the astrono- 

 mer, who by his labors, has taught us the cause, 

 period and harmless nature of an eclipse, a phe- 

 nomenon which is still regarded by the untaught 

 savage with consternation. 



The truth is, our Locust is not a Locust — it be- 

 longs to an entirely different order of insects. Bs 

 history, so far as I have been able to collect it is 

 as follows. — It belongs to the genus Cicada of the 

 order Hemiplera, section Homoptcra. Some of the 

 Cicadiadj: have long been celebrated for their 

 musical powers ; so much so, that a portion of 

 them have been grouped together and distinguish- 

 ed by the name of Cantatrices, or singers. Their 

 music, which is peculiar to the males, is not pro- 

 duced by the moytb, but by a musical instrument, 

 something like a kettle drum in construction, situ- 

 ated under the chest and covered by two large 

 scales or plates. They live on trees and shrubs, 

 the juices of which they suck. For this purpose 

 they are provided with a long, pointed tube, com- 

 posed of several distinct pieces, which they fold 

 underneath them when not in use. From the per- 

 forations which some of them make in a species of 

 ash (Ornus) exudes the substance so well known 

 to us under the name of manna. The female is 

 provided with an ovipositor or auger, of a horny 

 substance, about a third of an inch in length, usu- 

 ally resting in a sheath or groove in the body. 

 This is composed of three pieces, two of which 

 are spear-pointed and finely indented at the end 

 with teeth like a rasp. With this she perforates 

 obliquely the solid substance of the small twigs, 



and then forming the three pii ces into a tube, run- 

 her eggs through it into the opening. Hav- 

 ing filled this with eggs', she moves a little, either 

 along the limb or directly sideways, and performs 

 the same operation until she has deposited all her 

 . i ■■'■!■■■■ usually' amount to from 500 to 700. 

 are long, white and shining, and some- 

 what resemble hei'ds grass seed. The perforations 

 are marked by little elevations, caused by small 

 splinters fixed at one end and detached at the 

 1 ■!■■ :'. thus serving as a lid or valve to the opening; 

 and they look as if they might have been, product I 

 by shot, driven in at an angle of -15 deg. Virgil 

 supposed that these grooves were actually caused 

 by the bursting of the very shrubs from the loud 

 and querulous music of the insect. They usually 

 select dry twigs for this purpose, probably because 

 the moisture of a green one would prove injurious 

 to their eggs ; and in the case of the seventeen 

 year species, the shrub oak is most frequently 

 sought. When the eggs are hatched, the young 

 larva 1 immediately enter the earth, which they 

 reach either by travelling down the tree, or ac- 

 cording to some, by the dropping of the dead twig 

 to the ground before they are hatched. In the 

 earth they remain in a nymph state till the seven- 

 teenth summer, from which circumstance they re- 

 ceive their specific name, Cicada septemdectm. Of 

 their develnpement or mode of life in this state, 

 little, if any thing, is known, though a course of 

 i '■ ervations is now in process from which we may 

 i ,' to learn something, if the observers should 

 p< r.litted to live out this insect's term of life. 

 Probably, however, they are rather useful than in- 

 jurious, by keeping down a superabundant growth 

 of herbage. 



Dr. Shurtleff, in a preceding number of your 

 paper, by comparing the records of the appearance 

 of the C. septemdecem, thinks there must be some 

 mistake as to their period of appearance. This 

 discrepancy is easily and satisfactorily removed. 

 It is the same as to say that because calves may be 

 horn every month in the year, the period of gesta- 

 tion for the cow cannot he nine months. The 

 seventeen year Cicada is in fact seen every year in 

 some part of our land, and perhaps nearly every 

 year in the same place, in small numbers. In 

 1831 I received specimens of it from Sandwich, 

 Mass., in 1S32 from Genesee Co. N. Y., in 1S33 

 from Martha's Vineyard, and this year they are 

 abundant in various parts of our land, especially at 

 the south. Thus it will he readily seen how the 

 same family or swarm shall appear and propagate 

 only once in seventeen years, while members of 

 other families may exhibit themselves at any time 

 in the intermediate period. 



There are several species of Cicada among us, 

 to be found every year, but none of them in such 

 vast numbers as to conceal the foliage and bend 

 or even break down the branches on which they 

 lodge, as does this species. Among them are the 

 C. pruinosa, the most common, and the C. tibictn, 

 which last measure two and a half or three inches 

 in length, and it is said that the noise of a single 

 individual is such that it may be heard a mile. 

 The C. septemdecem may be distinguished from all 

 the others in our laud by its smaller size, being 

 about an inch long, its black body, and the eyes 



