110 



Checldng Horses. — Milk. 



Vol. IX. 



rnent liere, and the disordered state of my 

 health, will not allow me to comply with 

 t'le wishes of the Society in that respect. 



Amono- other places, I made a visit to 

 Marshfield, and there ate choioder, made 

 cliiefly of codfish, taken in the "deep waters 

 of the dark blue sea," by the hand, hook 

 and line of the great American commoner 

 himself. 



Arriving before dinner, he took us first 

 through his corn-field, by way of an appe- 

 tizer — and what with the thickness of the 

 corn and the number of the pumpkins on 

 the ground, you might as well have been 

 dragged through a Mississippi cane brake. 

 I could not help thinking what glorious mu- 

 sic a good pack would make in it, in pursuit 

 of a grey fox or a wild cat. A large por- 

 tion of the field would undoubtedly yield 

 eighty bushels of corn to the acre, and yet 

 corn of the same height with us, would not 

 produce twelve bushels. He was proud, 

 and had reason to be, of his large field of 

 " sioedes''' — his twelve beautiful heifers, of 

 the stock he selected in England, and of his 

 Southdown sheep; of which he generously 

 tendered as many as I would accept, which 

 was a buck and two ewes, to go into Prince 

 George's. But of all things he seemed to 

 be fondest of and most familiar, with his 

 noble oxen! — some six or eight yoke, that 

 would average, in the shambles, at least 

 twelve hundred. He seemed, too, to felici- 

 tate himself particularly in the shade of a 

 venerable and magnificent elm, near his 

 house, ^^ R^ligione patriim multos servnta 

 per annas" its graceful branches extending 

 over a diameter of a hundred feet. 

 Respectfully, 



J. S. Skinner. 



Washington, D. C. 



Checking Horses. 



A COMMUNICATION vvas made a year ago, 

 to the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, re- 

 specting a new, and, as it is stated, perfectly 

 efficacious mode of preventing horses from 

 taking fright and running away in harness. 

 Hitherto several means, all of them imper- 

 fect, have been devised to prevent acci- 

 dents of this nature. One most in fiivour 

 is a mechanism for detaching horses from 

 the traces, and settiBg them suddenly free, 

 but the mechanism is not always certain in 

 its action; and it can be easily comprehended 

 that, if the horses take fright on a descent, 

 the sudden detaching of the carriage may 

 be attended with very great danger. The 

 author of the paper before the Academy, 

 proposes a very simple remedy. Having 

 remarked that horses rarely take fright at 



night, — the paper says never, but this is a 

 mistake, for there have been instances of 

 the kind — the author imagined that all that 

 was necessary in order to check a horse 

 when running av.'ay, was to cause him to 

 be visited with temporal blindness ; and in 

 order to do this, he contrived by means of a 

 spring connected with the reins, to cover 

 the eyes suddenly. This was done when 

 the animals were at the top of their speed, 

 and the result was their instantaneous stop- 

 ping; for the light being suddenly excluded, 

 horses no more rush forwards, he says, with- 

 out seeing their way, than would a man 

 afllicted with blindness. The theory of the 

 invention is so reasonable, that we are 

 strongly disposed to believe in the utility of 

 it, and we sincerely trust that we may not 

 be disappointed. How many calamities may 

 be prevented by the adoption of this simple 

 means of checking horses, if the inventor 

 be correct in his assertions; and, while we 

 hail Uiis discovery as a blessing, we cannot 

 but regret that to the absence of some effi- 

 cacious means of arriving at the result, 

 France owes the loss of one of her most 

 amiable princes. If such contrivance as 

 that spoken of in the paper before the Acade- 

 my, had been under the control of the postil- 

 ion who drove the Duke of Orleans, and had 

 been so effective as the inventor says such a 

 check must be, the Prince would have been 

 spared to his country and his family. — Bur- 

 lington Gazette. 



Milk.— Milk is a perfect food for a grow- 

 ing animal, containing the curd which is to 

 form the muscles, the butter which is to 

 supply the fat, the phosphates which are to 

 build up the bones, and the sugar which is 

 to feed the respiration. Nothing is wanting 

 in it. The mother selects all the ingredi- 

 ents of this perfect food from among the 

 useless substances which are mingled in 

 her own stomach with the food she eats — 

 she changes these ingredients chemically in 

 such a degree, as to present them to the 

 young animal in a state in which it can 

 most easily, and with least labour, employ 

 them for sustaining its body — and all this 

 she begins to do at a given and appointed 

 moment of time. How beautiful, how won- 

 derful, how kindly provident is all this! — 

 Johnston. 



Feed the earth, and she will feed you : — 

 act liberally towards her, and she will libe- 

 rally reward you. It is vain, as the N^ew 

 England Farmer says, to try to cheat her. 

 If you give her little, you need not look for 

 much; she will yield but little. 



