70 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Tbe. 



settle down safely. It is probably important 

 that no bad eggs go in, as it is supposed by some 

 that they would injure others. To test your eggs 

 put them in clean water, rejecting all that rise. 

 A better remedy is to look at them through atube 

 — say a roll of paper — by day-light, or hold them 

 between your eye and a good caudle by night. If j 

 the eggs are fresh, they will, in either case, look 

 transparent. If they are little injured, they will 

 look darkish. If much injured, they will lopk en- 

 tirely dark. Eggs, well put up and kept in this 

 manner, will keep, I cannot tell how long, but 

 until they are much more plenty and cheap than 

 at present, quite long enough. Leached ashes 

 well dried, and even grain, have kept eggs very 

 ■well, in my experience ; but no method is so cheap 

 and obvious as the lime-water. As lime absorbs 

 carbonic acid slowly, and thus l^ecomes insoluble, 

 80 almost any lime, even though it has been 

 slacked for months, wilt answer the purpose. 

 Lime-water, permitted to stand still, will immedi- 

 ately be covered with a transparent film. This is 

 the lime of the water uniting with the carbonic 

 acid of the atmosphere, and returning to the state 

 of lime-stone, and does not hurt the eggs. — Mark 

 Lane Express. 



TO FARMERS. 



Neat be your farms : 'tia long confessed 



The neatest farmer is the best. 



Each bog and marsh industrious drain, 



Nor let Tilo balks deform the plain, 



Nor bushes on your headland gro-.T, 



For briars a sloven's culture show. 



Keat be your barns, your houses neat, 



Your doors be clean, your court-yards sweet; 



No moss the sheltering roof enshroud, 



Kor wooden panes the window cloud ; 



No liUhy kennels foully flow, 



Kor weeds with rankling poison grow ; 



But shades expand and fruit trees bloom, 



And flowering shrubs exhale perfume ; 



■With pales your garden circle round ; 



Defend, enrich, and clean the ground ; 



Prize high the pleasing, useful rood, 



And fill with vegetable good. 



THE ATMOSPHERE AND ITS EFFECTS 

 UPON ANIMAL LIFE. 



A very interesting lecture was delivered by Dr. 

 Griscom at the New York Mechanics' Institute, 

 on the "Influence of Air in connection with Ani- 

 mal Life." Some of them would be surprised to 

 hear that they lived at the bottom of an immense 

 ocean of air fifty miles deep ; yet it was so, and 

 the color of this ocean, which is called the atmo- 

 sphere, is a deep cerulean blue. To perceive this 

 it waa necessary to be able to see at once the 

 ■whole volume, and also on a calm and clear day, 

 for no color could be perceived if seen in small 

 quantities, or when there was either wind or hazi- 

 ness. In like manner the color of water could 

 not be seen in small quantities, and was only per- 

 ceptible where there was a vast expanse of ocean. 

 The air was also a substance capable of condensa- 

 tion and expansion. Its expansion wtis seen in 

 the winds, by which ships were made to traverse 

 the ocean, and also in windmills. The tornado 

 was another phase of its expansion, by which 

 trees were uprooted and houses overturned, and 

 ■was almost equal to the power of steam. The 



greatest weight of the atmosphere was fifteen 

 pounds to the square inch , and this weight presses 

 on every way, both upward and do'wnward. To 

 explain the pressure upwards, the lecturer exhaus- 

 ted the air out of a large vase, which then re- 

 mained fast to the plato on which it stood, but 

 on the air being let in it was easily removed. I 

 remember, said he, being asked the question, if 

 there is a pressure of fifteen pounds to the square 

 inch, the reason why we were not at once crushed 

 by the weight ; but this is, as I before explained, 

 because the air presses in all directions with the 

 same equal force, and hence there is an equili- 

 brium. This is a most important element, and 

 one that requires to be known, and also that the 

 air never presses more than fifteen pounds to the 

 square inch. 



The next quality of the air is ehisticity. Press 

 it to make it occupy a smaller sjsace than it other- 

 wise would, and then take away the weight, and 

 it comes back and occupies its original space. 

 The lecturer then explained that in the air there 

 were two gases ; one oxygen, which is that part 

 of the atmosphere by which chiefly we live, and 

 which is the one-fifth part ; and the other nitro- 

 gen, which is four-fifths of the atmosphere. Oxy- 

 gen supports life and combustion, and nitrogen 

 restrains its effects and dulls its operations. The 

 quantity of air which a person consumes deju^nds 

 in a measure on one's self, and by training can be 

 made more or less. The tailor and the shoe- 

 maker take little in comparison with the laborer, 

 and the public speaker or singer, or those who 

 cry commodities ibr sale through the streets. A 

 man in good health makes eighteen respirations in 

 a minute, and in twenty-four hours consumes 

 fifty-one hogsheads of the air. As the oxygen 

 which supports life is so small, we ought to be 

 very particular how we permit other gases to mix 

 with it and vitiate it. The blood when it enters 

 the lungs is black, but when the oxygen acts on it, 

 it becomes red, and sends it through the veins to 

 impart life and animation. This black blood is 

 produced by carbon, and imparts the blackness 

 which we see in the face of persons who lose their 

 lives by suffocation, because the air was not al- 

 lowed to reach the lungs to purify it. When 

 we send out the air from the lungs, we do not 

 send it in the same manner as we inhaled it, for 

 when exhaled it is as deadly a poison as arsenic 

 or corrosive sublimate. The lecturer showed this 

 by experiments, and filled a vase with his own 

 breath in which a lighted candle would not live. 

 It was such air as killed persons who went down 

 into wells in the country, or who died when a pan 

 of charcoal was placed in a room. The danger of 

 taking impure matter into the stomach waa not 

 so great as into the lungs, for the stomach had 

 power to eject impurities which the lungs had 

 not. Besides the impure air which we esliale 

 there are 2,800 pores on every square inch of the 

 surface of the body, and to a body of large size 

 there are 2,590 square inches ; and these mul- 

 tiplied make 7,000,000 of pores. There is a 

 sort of drainage pipe in the body, which sends 

 out matter as well as gas, and this pipe is calcu- 

 lated at twenty-eight miles long. The particles 

 of matter which are sent out and which do not 

 dissolve, are so numerous, that in China, where 

 the houses are low, and a great many persons are 

 in the habit of assembling in one room, it baa 



