1S36.] 



FARIMERS' REGISTER. 



557 



was shut out from the Hice of nature, but for this 

 richest of earlhly blessings as a boon bestowed 

 on us, for the wisest and most beneficent of pur- 

 poses — though by injudicious [inictire, it iiaSj I am 

 sorr}' to believe, been productive in its early abuse, 

 of" as much injury as benefit to dear old Viryinin. 

 The practice to which I allude is that, of first 

 siimulating iheeart'a to an unnatural product of 

 clover, and then robbing it of every spice — the re- 

 sult ofthis great eflbrt — by the scythe and grazing, 

 unaided by standing pasture, which is indispensa- 

 ble to any improving system. 



I have thus, Mr. Editor, given 3'ou a Tiithfiil 

 transcript of this record ofmy pyadice.- as far as it 

 goes. Could it Iiave been aliridged witiiouf muti- 

 lation, or doing violence lo the unpretending ob- 

 ject of the writer, it would have been : and I may 

 add, should its destination, in a luckless moment to 

 your readers, be the columns of the Register, in- 

 etcad of its more appropriate shelf, they may be 

 assured, that tedious as is the task its perusal im- 

 poses, they can not be more objects of commisera- 

 tion, than he wlio seeks in so (hdl a detail a solace 

 fi'om labors that he would fain forget, in that 

 crowning rewanl of the fiirmer's toil, which a do- 

 mestic fireside alone can give. 



James River having gathered into her garners 

 the ixreniest share of the profits of Virginia agri- 

 culture, and her farmers occupyiu<r, justly, the 

 highest eminence of its i]ime-,-far as I am from 

 detracMny: from either, especially the hitter ascrip- 

 tion^-I should be recreant to the land of my adop- 

 tion, were I to withhold from it the designation of 

 my signature. 



RIVAKNA. 



coal. So intense is the heat produced, that to pre- 

 vent the meltino; of the cast iron lining near the 

 nozzles of the blow [apes, it has liecome necessa- 

 ry to sidistifute lor the solid lining a hollow one, 

 through which cold water is consiantly jrassing. 



The theory of the operation of ihe heated air is 

 thus exfdained by Dr. Claik. JByan examination 

 of the quantity oi' air consumed at the Calder iron 

 works, he found that 2807 cubic feet per minute 

 was used, which nt the temperature of 50° Fah- 

 rerdieit, would weigh two cwt,, or six tons of air 

 an hour. This quantity of cold air thrown into 

 the furnace acts as ;i prodigious refrigeratory on the 

 hottest part of the mass, and must materially re- 

 duce its temperature. By previously lieating ibis 

 current of" air, it is at liberty to act in promoting 

 combu<tion, without robbing that combustion of 

 any of the heat thus produced. 



From ths Genesee Farmer. 

 aiAXUFACTURE OF IRON. 



At a time when all the world is awake on the 

 subject of rail roads, and the mania respecting 

 them promises to be as extensive as that which 

 once existed lor canals — when companies for their 

 construction have been incorporated in Great Bri- 

 tain, sufficient to consume all the iron that can be 

 produced in that country lor two years to come — 

 when more than 3900 miles have been projected 

 in this country, lor the iron of which we depended 

 on foreign countries, but for which recent events 

 Bhow we must mainly rely on ourselves, it is mat- 

 ter of congratulation that a process has been dis- 

 covered which will greatly reduce the price of the 

 article, by nearly douhling the quantity which a 

 given amount of labor and cost will produce. 



This improvement has been introduced by Mr. 

 Nielson of Scotland, and consists in heating the air 

 used for the blast of the smelting furnaces. It is 

 efl'ected by passing the air from the bellows 

 through red hot cast iron pipes, by which its tem- 

 perature is raised to 6 or 700 degrees of Fahren- 

 iieit, and the current will melt lead and sometimes 

 zmc. Formerly it was necessary to convert tlie 

 coal into coke, by which about one half its weight 

 was lost; now the. coal is itself used, and this 

 great loss is averted. In 1R2D, by the old method, 

 three furnaces produced 111 tons of iron, using 

 403 tons of cr)!<e, to make wh.ich required S3S tons 

 of coal. In 1835, by the new method, lour furna- 

 ces made 245 tons of iron, using only 554 tons of 



From tlie New York Express. 

 GKOI.OGICAL WOJVDER. 



At the United States Quarry in the village of 

 Kennebunkjjort, JMaine, where they are now 

 quarrying large quantities of a strong, rich and 

 beautiful granite — take it altogether, pt>rhaps the 

 very best buikling material on earth, inasmuch as 

 (vith all its other good qualities, it rings like cast 

 iron, works atlmirably and easily, and has been 

 subjected to a iieatof seven hundred by Proft>ssor 

 Cleaveland, without flinching — the workmen have 

 just discovered a rift or dike, which, had it been 

 planned by the most skilful engineer, and ex- 

 ecuted at a cost of fifty thousand dollars, lor the 

 sole purpose of draining the quarry, and enabling 

 the proprietors to work it to advantage, could not 

 have been more judiciously contrived or executed. 

 !t has been cleared to the depth of twelve or thir- 

 teen feet in one place, and thoroughly sounded 

 through its whole extent — is about six feet in 

 width, of unknown depth, full of loose earth, which 

 may be shovelled out. leaving a straight, smooth, 

 perpendicular loall on each side, the whole extent 

 of the quarry, it is now under contract, and will be 

 finished to the depth of twenty or twent^v-five feet 

 in some places, by the first of January, 1837. A 

 covered drain will be left as they proceed. Thus 

 it is that nature — perhaps it were not irreverent to 

 say the God of Nature— provides, ages and ages 

 beforehand, for the wants of man ! This dike, 

 or fissure, which must have been caused by an 

 earthquake, or some other tremendous convulsion 

 of our earth, centuries ago, for the walls are too 

 smooth, and the soil too loose and uniform, to ad- 

 mit of almost any other supposition, will be of 

 immense advantage to the quarry, and could not 

 have been imitated even by blasting, which would 

 have ruined thousands and thousauds of Ions of 

 this beautiful stone at an outlay of not less than fifty 

 or a hundred thousand dollars. 



I observed at the stone yard of another company 

 (the Kennebunk Rail Road and Granite Compa- 

 nv,) who are at work in the neighborhood of the 

 United States qiiarr}', (which by the way belongs 

 to the Maine Quarrying Association — ) a most 

 beautiful front of hammered stone, intended lor 

 your Lafiiyette Place. 1 know not when I have seen 

 a better work, f)r a material to be compared Aviih 

 it ; and yet I aui satisfied that a much darker and 

 richer stone will yet be obtained at this quarry as 



