1854. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



367 



would never again undertake tliis kind of horti- 

 •tilture. 



For the Ifcw England Farmer. 



HOW TO FIND WATER. 



Mr. Editor : — A,bout a year ago, a stranger 

 came here and passed the night, and in the course 

 of the evening he said that his business had been 

 that of digging wells, and that he could by means 

 of the rod, tell where to dig for water, and how 

 far it was to it. We did not believe it, and in 

 the morning he said he would try it. So in the 

 morning he got a rod and went into the road and 

 v/alked along, holding the rod in his hands, the 

 palm of his hands being turned up. lie had not 

 gone but a few steps when tlie rod began to turn 

 down till it pointed pci'pendicularly to the ground ; 

 he then said he w^ould trace the vein and see 

 where it went to — and he traced it directly to the 

 house where there was a well, but entirely cov- 

 ered up, so that there were no signs of a well there, 

 the pump being taken out. And then we began 

 to believe there was something in it. My fath- 

 er took the rod and held it in the same position 

 and passed over the vein and it had no efToct at 

 all. Then I tried it, and to my utter astonish- 

 ment the rod worked in my hands as well as it did 

 in the stranger's. I held the rod as tight as I 

 could grasp it, and it would turn down, wrench- 

 ing the bark from the rod. Last August I thought 

 I would dig in the pasture where the rod indicat- 

 ed there was water. I dug about seven feet and 

 came to a good spring of water ; the surface of 

 the ground where I dug was dry, and gave no ap- 

 pearance of water. One of my neighbors liad 

 dug a well a year or two before, for the purpose of 

 supplying his cattle with water, and found but 

 little, and he wished me to go and see where he 

 could dig and find a good spring. I went and 

 found that he had dug within aljout eight feet of 

 ;» vein. lie went to work and dug about eight 

 or nine feet, and found a good supply of water. I 

 have seen a great many pc-rsons try it, but the I'od 

 would not work in thoir liands. I use a crotched 

 ttick, the prongs being about two feet long. Sweet 

 apple, black cherry, or peach rods are as good as 

 witch hazel, and I believe point out passages of 

 water in the ground if held in certain persons' 

 hands. W^hy they will not work in every one's 

 hands I am unable to tell. e. n. c. 



Jamaica, Vt., 1854. 



"BLINDS" ON HORSES. 



In passing through tliis city, I have seen many 

 fine horses, some of which must be getting blind 

 from the cruelty of their drivers ; not l)y whip- 

 ping or starving, but from the manner in which 

 blinders, so termed, are used. No horse can have 

 good eye-sight afccr wearing these unnecessary 

 appendages for a length of time, as I have seen 

 them, 80 closely drawn together in front as to 

 rub or chafe the eye-lids. It is hurtful to have 

 them, worn as they usually are, tlirown out an 

 inch or so from the eye. If tliey must be worn, 

 it would be much better to set them out, at an 

 angle of forty-five degrees or more, from a right 

 line with a side of the face. It would, however, 

 be still l)ctter if they were not worn at all. 



A horse will soon get accustomed to all that he 

 can sec, as not to be any more easily frightened 



without them than he is with them by the sense 

 of hearing. lie is too valuable an animal for us 

 to be careless of his health and comfort, too no- 

 ble a gift to be so misused as to lessen his own in- 

 nate worth, to say nothing of his commercial 

 value. 



I have charged this as a cruelty coming from 

 the drivers, because they can easily remedy the 

 matter. It is not my intention to assert, that 

 wrong in this matter is so by the choice of these 

 men. It would be as much as saying that they, 

 as a class, are destitute of all the kindly feelings 

 of humanity. 



Tliese remarks are not intended to apply to the 

 city more than to the country, for those cruelties 

 are practised in the latter place quite as much as 

 in the former. — Corres. American Agricullurist. 



A LOFTY CATERACT. 



_ Capt._ Walker, of the U. S. Surveying Expedi- 

 tion, gives the following account, in the San 

 Diego Herald, of a wonderful caUiract wliich htf 

 discovered in his explorations : — 



"On the Upper Virgin river are two very re- 

 markable fiills. One of them, two hundred miles 

 from its mouth, is the most stupendous cataract in 

 the world ; it falls in an almost unbroken sheet 

 a distance of full one thousand feet ! The river 

 some distance above, traverses a pretty timbered 

 valley, and then runs through a close kenyon. 

 Here the current becomes rapid. The mountain* 

 seem to run directly across the river. At the fall 

 the stream is narrowed to thirty or forty yards — 

 while the kenyon rises on either side in almost per- 

 pendicuhu- clitTs to a lieight of two hundred feet. 

 Tiie pent up stream rushes on to the brink of the 

 precipice, leaps over the falls with scarce a break 

 into the vast abyss below. 



About thirty miles above, there isanother mag- 

 nificent fall. Here the river plunges over the 

 clifl', falls a distance of two or three hundred 

 feet, and breaks into a myriad of fragments upon 

 a projecting ledge beneath. Although the fall is 

 not so great as the other, it is more picturesque, 

 from the multitude of smaller cataracts into 

 which it is divided by the rocks." 



A CURIOUS STRUCTURE. 



The nest of a tarantula (spider) has been found 

 in California, of most singular construction. It 

 is about three inches in kngth, by two in diam- 

 eter, built of adobes, the walls being nearly half 

 an inch thick. Inside is a projection, which near- 

 ly divides into two apartments about an inch in 

 diameter. Tlie inside is lined with a downy sub- 

 stance, not unlike velvet, and presents one of the 

 cleanest and most tidy little households imagina- 

 ble. But the most curious part of it is a door, 

 wiiich fits an aperture and closes hermetically. 

 The door is secured liy a hinge, formed of the 

 same fjlu'ous substance as the lining of the house, 

 and upon which it swings with freedom. The next 

 is occupied by a dozen little tar.antulas, which 

 seem to subsist upon a yellow secreted 8u])stance 

 that appears on the walls of the front apartment. 

 The arrangement of the door for the protection of 

 the little mmatcs, indicates great instinctive ar- 

 chitectural knuwledge. It is the intention of the 

 finder to forward this curiosity to the Smithso- 

 nian institute at Washington. 



