No. 11. 



Agricultural Minutes, Philadelphia. 



333 



cies are obliged to repair by sleep and re- 

 pose the fatigues of the body, every sixteen 

 hours at least, so that even the laborious 

 pass more than a third of their lives in bed ; 

 the idle, fashionable and luxurious, and wo- 

 men, nearly half their time, and children, in 

 health, sleep most of their time. 



The Romans used to sleep in the day, and 

 had particular rooms distinct from their bed 

 chambers where they slept in the day, and 

 in Italy and southern countries, that practice 

 is still continued ; therefore, it is of the ut- 

 most importance what kind of bed we lie 

 upon, the harder the bed, in reason, the 

 healthier we are. Wool mattresses give 

 this hardness and firmness, at the same time 

 yield sufficiently to the pressure of our bo 

 dies, and form an agreeable and luxurious 

 bed, and wool does not make marks on the 

 skin or relax as other bedding. In the old 

 accounts of the court of England there is a 

 charge on a journey for so many bundles of 

 clean straw for the queen's bed; then it was 

 said when men slept on straw with a log of 

 wood for their pillows, they were men of 

 iron, and now they sleep on feather beds and 

 down pillows, they are men of straw. All 

 great men, warriors, heroes, &c., who have 

 made any noise in the world, have always 

 slept on a hard bed, from Charles XII. to 

 Napoleon. 



Chemically, wool is the best for bedding, 

 wool flannel, and all substances made of| 

 wool, keep our bodies warm; they are com- 

 posed of a rare and spongy mass, the fibres 

 of which touch each other so slightly that 

 the heat moves slowly through their inter- 

 stices, and wool retains its heat better than 

 any other material, and does not strike so 

 cold. People may be convinced of the im- 

 priety of lying long in bed, by knowing that 

 a sound man in one night of seven hours' 

 sleep generally perspires fifty ounces avoir- 

 dupois or four pounds troy weight ; we can- 

 not wonder at that, since there are above 

 three hundred thousand millions of pores in 

 the body of a middle sized man, and that in 

 the last hours of sleep one perspires most ; 

 hence the impropriety and the weakness of 

 lying too long in a soft bed and the necessity 

 of lying on a comparative hard elastic bed, 

 such as a wool mattress. In France wool 

 mattresses are generally adopted, conse- 

 quently you never meet with a bad bed 

 there. 1 have travelled all over France and 

 never met with a bad bed, and a very recent 

 intelligent American traveller, of great ob 

 servation, mentions on his removal from 

 England to France, that he found the French 

 beds delicious because the beds are wool 

 mattresses. 



Mode of making a Wool Mattress, — The 



first thing to constitute a good healthy bed 

 is, that it must be absolutely flat, therefore 

 all bedsteads should have wooden laths in- 

 stead of sacking, which always gives and 

 forms a hollow; the wool is carded by hand, 

 and all knots and extraneous matter taken 

 out, the great point is to make it thick 

 enough. The best bed I slept in, in my 

 life, had sixty pounds of wool in it, but the 

 bed was a very large extra size ; half that 

 quantity will make a small bed, but if you 

 wish to lie luxuriously, yet hard, do not stint 

 the v>7ool, that makes all this difference; the 

 covering is washed once a year; the wool is 

 carded and a few pounds of wool added, and 

 the bed is sweet and new. However luxu- 

 riously he may be, let any gentleman have 

 a good wool mattress made, and let him ride 

 forty or fitly miles and thorouglily fatigue 

 himself, he will then know the value of such 

 a bed. My object is to increase the home 

 consumption of our wool. There are twenty 

 odd millions in the United States; say five 

 to each family, four millions; say three beds 

 to each family, taking the whole population 

 twelve millions; say thirty pounds of wool 

 to each bed, three hundred and sixty millions 

 of pounds of wool ; say thirty-four millions 

 of sheep in the United States, say eighty 

 million pounds of wool; this will consume 

 more than four years' clip of our wool. This 

 ought to be promulgated to increase the con- 

 sumption of our wool, and such wool as can- 

 not be sold abroad. Independent of the bene- 

 fit to all in their health who adopt wool 

 mattresses on account of their cleanliness 

 and durability, in the end, they are cheaper 

 than any other bedding. 



Agricultural Minutes, Philadelphia. 



A STATED monthly meeting of the Phila- 

 delphia Society for promoting Agriculture, 

 was held on Wednesday, the 7th inst, at 

 their rooms, Washington Hall, South Third 

 street, A. S. Roberts, President, in the chair. 

 Col. B. B. Long, of Philadelphia, was elected 

 a resident member. Three gentlemen were 

 proposed for membership. 



A letter from B. P. Johnson, Secretary of 

 the New York State Agricultural Society 

 was read, informing the meeting that Pro- 

 fessor Johnson, so celebrated for his lectures 

 on chemistry, as connected with agriculture 

 in Great Britain, proposed making a visit to 

 this country. 



The committee on the exhibition made re- 

 port, stating that they had the ofl^er of the 

 race-course for holding the Annual Show, 

 and on motion of Mr. Ford, a committee of 

 arrangement was appointed to make the ne- 

 cessary preparation. 



