508 



NEAV ENGLAND FARI^IER. 



Nov. 



take more precautions against the high tempera- 

 tui'e of air from small air-chambers to house- 

 warming furnaces. Hot air will char wood, and 

 will set cotton and linen cloth on fire, as readily 

 almost as flame itself, if the temperature is al- 

 lowed to run as high as it frequently does, in air 

 from a small hot-air chamber. A large volume 

 of moderately heated air is far safer and whole- 

 somer than almost red-hot air from a furnace. 

 Woodwork, near chimneys of old houses, is often 

 found to be charred, and I have frequently seen 

 it in the state of very combustible charcoal, on 

 taking off old hearths. It seemed wonderful that 

 the houses had not been burned. It is a mistake 

 to suppose that a red heat is necessary to set 

 wood on fire. Instances are known of shavings 

 packed around a steam escape-pipe, being set on 

 fire by the heat of steam under ordinary atmo- 

 spheric pressure, viz., 212° Fahrenheit. 



A drying-room in a chemical establishment 

 was set on fire by air at 240° and in drying pig- 

 ments. 



A flouring mill was set on fire by the heat of a 

 corn-drying kiln, at a temperature below 300° 

 Fahrenheit, and lastly strips of painted carpet, 

 packed in a barrel and placed in a garret, took 

 fire at the ordinary temperature produced by the 

 sun's rays, and turpentine chips placed in a bar- 

 rel, in a yard to a drug store, took fire spontane- 

 ously. Charles T. Jackson. 



Boston, Sept. 8, 1858. 



PASTUBING IN THE HIGHWAYS. 



The grass which grows in the road on which a 

 man's land lies, is as much his as the fruit or 

 shade trees standing there. All the public owns 

 in the highway is the right of passing over it ; 

 and even the town authorities can take no more 

 cf the earth from it, or anything else, than is 

 necessary for making the passages safe and con- 

 venient for travellers. Horses and cattle, there- 

 fore, that run at large and feed by the roadsides, 

 are, in fact, just as much taking what belongs to 

 the person over whose land the road runs, as a 

 man is stealing his property who should cut 

 down and cart off the apple trees or shade trees 

 that stand in front of his house. But this is a 

 small item in the objections that lie against pas- 

 turing in the highways. It obliges every man to 

 be at the expense of maintaining a high, strong 

 fence, which he ought not to be required to keep 

 for the sake of making a "long pasture" for his 

 neighbors. In France there are no fences on the 

 roads. All the fences there on any farms, are 

 those around the pasture grounds. So in some 

 other European nations. Indeed, we know some 

 of our own towns in Maine, where the citizens 

 have voted not to allow cattle to run at large ; 

 and the law is so well observed, that whole farms 

 go unfenced by the roadsides. This is a great 

 saving, and one to which every farmer ought to 

 be lawfully entitled. The law ought to be as good 

 a pi'otector of a man's rights as cedar posts or 

 stone walls. Or if allowed to get their living for 

 their horses, cattle, sheep and swine out of the 

 highways, they are bound to keep a shepherd 

 with them all the time, for really, in law, no man 

 is obliged to keep a rod of fence between his 

 cornfield and the road. 



If one man may pasture his cows in the road, 



all have an equal right to do the same; and 

 when droves of cattle are all the season roaming 

 about the streets and public ways, they are not 

 only oftentimes a nuisance in the way of enter- 

 ing open gates, and breaking down fences, but 

 are sometimes dangerous to persons by their ill 

 tempers and vicious habits. A man cannot al- 

 ways have watch of his gate or bars to see that 

 they are every moment closed against the ingress 

 of bold and breachy animals. The evils, there- 

 fore, to a patient and suffering public, from the 

 too common practice of pasturing in the high- 

 ways, are very great, and should be corrected 

 either by the good sense of the community or by 

 the force of law. Even the owners of such cattle 

 themselves run a risk which more than overbal- 

 ances what they gain by this theft upon the pub- 

 lic — the risk of impounding fees, of bills of dam- 

 age to the enclosures they enter, of straying 

 away beyond re&overy at night, of being stoned 

 and maimed by vexed neighbors and unruly 

 boys, and of being dogged by a maddened ca- 

 nine race. We had rather buy our milk at ten 

 cents per quart, and our butter at fifty cents per 

 pound, than ;to purchase and own a cow and 

 take all the risks and censures of pasturing in 

 in the highways. — Mural Intelligencer. 



Remarks. — Friend Drew has graphically de- 

 picted some of the evils growing out of turning 

 stock loose into the highways, — but the greatest 

 among them all he has not yet adverted to — and 

 that is the great danger of misunderstandings, 

 qviarrels and litigation, growing out of the forays 

 which cattle make upon pronerty where they do 

 not belong. 



Every man is bound by principles of morality 

 and kindness to be a good neighbor, and when 

 he permits his horses, cattle, poultry, or dog, to 

 endanger his property, or the persons of his fam- 

 ily, he opens the way for harsh feelings, for 

 quarrels, and perhaps for litigation which may 

 be continued for several years, and which may 

 end in such expenditures as to drive one or both 

 from the possession of the farm ! We have 

 known such instances. 



It is scarcely less than a crime, then, for a 

 farmer to allow any of his stock to trespass upon 

 the property of another. Accidents will occur, 

 where stock will break a fence and get out, but 

 these are exceptions, and even if they do consid- 

 erable damage, the matter is easily overlooked. 



We look upon that man as a bad neighbor, 

 who permits his stock of any kind — and espe- 

 cially his dogs — to injure or give anxiety to those 

 around him. 



APPLES AS FOOD. 

 The working people in cities do not, as a 

 general thing, regard apples as food, but merely 

 as a luxury ; this is especially the case with our 

 foreign population. But apples are not estimated 

 according to their real value as an article of 

 food ; they hold a low rank in the estimation of 

 most person* in comparison with potatoes, so far 



