1819. 



THE GENESEE FARMER 



67 



.I '.viih red root and other noxious weeds, it 

 would be invaluable, as it would allow the harrow, 

 or hand hoe to destroy the whole mass of plants 

 previous to their Beeding, except in the drills, which 

 might be hand weeded. 



Lunar Influence. — Your correspondent EL, in 



answer to Mr. 1)., seems to us to be engaged iii that 



unprofitable contest — trying which can do the other 



the most haftti ; a course more to be tolerated in the 



ch than in the observance. His articles on other 



ects are interesting. 



Page's Portable Wind-Mill. — Wo have often 

 thought what a mighty and available power, sweeps 

 daily over our heads, unused and unnoticed. Although 

 fee whole inventive power of man is tasked to 

 multiply labor-saving machinery, yet the irresistable 

 torrents of the viewless air, possessing all the poten- 

 tiality of water or steam, is not harnessed by the 

 will of man for his benefit. In all flat countries,, 

 which have to depend upon wells for the use of cattle* 

 a cheap, simple and durable wind-wheel, with a 

 leather strap and buckets, like a mill elevator, lifting 

 the water into a trough, the overplus conducted back 

 into the well, and situated at the corner of two or 

 more fields, would double the value of the land for 

 pasturage. 



Outlines of Fruits.— Won't you, Mr. Editor, to 

 oblige ten thousand of your readers, omit those un- 

 couth outlines of apples, pears, fcc, those cycles in 

 epyeicles, orbs in orbs — those unmeaning uniformities. 

 There is no individual one of them but may serve for 

 twenty va-rieties, and no person under heaven can 

 individualize any one of them, sepatate from the letter 

 press descriptions. They are unsightly and un- 

 profitable to your readers, and costly to yourself. 

 We pray you to reform it altogether. 



In Season and Out of Season. — Permit me, Mr. 

 Editor, to suggest to you the propriety of adapting 

 your own and your selected articles to the season of 

 the year in which they appear. To be talking to us 

 of planting corn, when there is two feet of snow on 

 the ground, or of housing and feeding cattle in dog 

 days, is like "sweet bells jangled — harsh and out 

 of" tune." H. Y. 



GOLDEN DREAMS -GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 



Mr. Moore : — Many persons are disposed to 

 question the authenticity of the reports, relative to 

 the almost inexhaustible supplies of Gold and other 

 precious minerals in California and New Mexico ; 

 because they cannot see how, or why, such an 

 immense deposit should only be found in that locality, 

 and not otherwheres on the globe. 



I am disposed to think, that gold is a more univer- 

 sally distributed metal than has generally been sup- 

 posed, and many sands will be found to be auriferous, 

 especially if in the neighborhood of primitive or 

 metamorphic ranges. It is found in Mexico, South 

 America, Africa, the Southern States, in Vermont, 

 in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, and to the 

 extreme north in Russia. Some persons suppose 

 that it has been thrown up by volcanic action and 

 fell a gold show T er on the sands. Its production and 

 location is simple and efsily accounted for, if we 

 look at the cosmogony of the earth, and observe its 

 strict mechanical structure, from the lowest sedi- 

 mentary rock to the surface ; coming to the unerring 

 conclusion, that every particle of the soil, is the 



result of the deco -ion of the plu- 



tonic and sedimentary rocks; quiet,. • v lueelements, 

 and by the rushing of Roods and currents caused I y 

 a change of the poles ; or variation of ievels, from 

 the upheaving, or de; i tracts of the 



surface. The source of these metals will be found 

 in the great chain of mountains, that separate the 

 Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which are volcanic and 

 probably green stone and basaltic. These upheaved 

 and volcanic nns-e- in cooling contracted and era" ed, 

 leaving fissures, which were subsequently filled by 

 igneous action, with quartz and metamorphic mi 

 which contained the gold, injected by the mighty 

 force acting from below, as is always found to be 

 case with the metals found in the primitive rock as 

 a matrix. 



Gold is often associated with sulphuret of iron,- 

 which is of easy decomposition, leaving the gold) 

 which is indestructible, free, to be washed down to 

 the valleys, by floods and rains and the great com- 

 motions of the early periods of the earth's history. 

 From the flattened and plated appearance of the 

 washed gold of that region, it is evident that the 

 agent of its distribution was the tremendous currents, 

 that, during the unsettled periods of the earth's age, 

 were so general over its whole surface, and the rush- 

 ing of all loose, yielding and unattached matter, 

 compounded of water, rocks, icebergs and abraded 

 materials, sweeping with inconceivable velocity, at a 

 time when the "earth was void and without form," 

 which denuded and laid bare formations and strata, 

 which had originally superior deposits, of more than 

 10,000 feet in thickness, and which being crushed 

 and comminuted forms the present soil. 



The direction of the last of these great currents, 

 which finally left the drift or soil as it is now found, 

 was in a direction on the Atlantic side of the great 

 dividing ridge, (occasionally deflected by the moun- 

 tain ranges a few degrees,) in a north and south direc- 

 tion, as the marked and striated rocks below the drift, 

 every where give unmistakeable evidence. The 

 precious metals found not in situ, but in the soil, can 

 readily be turned up to the original deposit, by finding 

 the course the great oceanic currents took on the 

 Pacific coast and following the mountain ranges. 

 Gold is generally found pure, occasionally alloyed 

 with silver, but never with a salifiable base. It is 

 found in all sizes and shapes, from hundred pound 

 masses to the finest dust, in which case quicksilver 

 is used to dissolve it, which is then driven oft' by 

 heat. 



Rearing Lambs. — I think the difficulty mentioned 

 in the January number of the Farmer, page 46, may 

 be obviated by the following process: — In the m 

 of August take the lambs away from the ewes, with 

 a few old sheep you wish to fat and kill, and put 

 them in fresh feed, and the lambs will do better than 

 to run with the ewes. The ewes will improve, and 

 the lambs will winter as well as the old sheep, on 

 the same feed. My word for that. Try it. Jl'aync 

 Co., Feb., 1849. E. F. 



The Best Animals. — Of all animals, of what- 

 ever kind, those with the smallest and cleanest bones 

 are generally the best proportioned, and covered with 

 the best and finest grained meat. They are the 

 hardiest, healthiest and best feeders ; able to bear 

 the most fatigue while living, and worth the most 

 per pound when dead. — Sel. 



