298 



Electricity in Agriculture. 



Vol. IX. 



temperature till it melted, or went back, as 

 one of my women told me. Hence you per- 

 ceive the necessity of" close attention in 

 churning. Beginning with a good velocity 

 and continuing the same motion till a little 

 pressure is felt on the handle, which signifies 

 the approach to butter, and then decrease 

 the motion gradually till the butter begins 

 to gather or break, when a few turns back- 

 ward and forward will end the process. 

 Now if the cream was good and sweet — 

 churned properly, and has come in 15 or 20 

 minutes, I will warrant good butter so far. 

 But it is as often spoiled after taken from 

 the churn as before. 



The best temperature for the whole pro- 

 cess of the dairy is, as I have before stated, 

 between 50 and 65°, the latter perhaps the 

 best. This winter I brought my milk to the 

 house, appropriated a closet to it in a room 

 where I have kept the temperature to an 

 average rate of 60°. The past winter, 

 however, has been very mild, and during 

 some of the warm days I observed the milk 

 turned within twenty-four hours; during 

 which time I leave the milk to cream. My 

 observations after taking the butter from the 

 churn and objections were these: 



First objection; — They would leave the 

 butter too long after churning in the butter 

 milk. I think as soon as the vessels for 

 working it can be made ready it is best to 

 take it out and rinse it off in strained water, 

 and then commence the working; do not let 

 the vessels be too warm — nay cool. 



Second objection ; — Working by hand — 

 the short scoop paddle being the neatest 

 and best. Working does not mean pad- 

 dling it over and over, but means pressure; 

 and when carefully done, two or three times 

 working over by small parcels, will be quite 

 sufficient: the best evidence of a sufficient 

 working, however, is the purity of the water 

 with which it is washed; when it runs clear 

 as a boll then stop. Salt to the taste next, 

 is a safe recommendation ; but I put in half 

 an ounce to every pound, which seems to be 

 best suited to the taste of my customers. 

 The common Liverpool salt, free from motes 

 and rolled very fine, is the kind I use. I 

 would recommend now a sufficient paddling 

 over to mix the salt well, and after standing 

 an hour or half hour, cut it in half pound 

 prints, and observe if it be streaky — which 

 is occasioned I think by the salt abstracting 

 the colouring matter of the butter — work 

 over each print by itself, and then if the 

 butter is not fit for any table, I'll give up. 

 Yours truly, 



F. H. 



Baltimore, March 28tb, 1845. 



Electricity in Agriculture. 



The Tring Agricultural Association held 

 their fourth annual meeting on P^iday. 



Mr. Gorden described a new method of 

 increasing the fertility of the land — by elec- 

 tricity. 



In Morayshire he met with a gentleman 

 who communicated to him many agricultu- 

 ral facts, and informed him that he had re- 

 cently seen, on the farm of Findrassie, a 

 plat of land which seemed to bear barley 

 and clover as if they were growing on a 

 dung-hill; and that that effect was produced 

 by singular means, but easily to be compre- 

 hended by persons versed in science. Per- 

 haps, when he mentioned it, they would 

 call him a wire- worm; and perhaps they 

 would be astonished if he told them that 

 the most successful agriculturists might be 

 the poachers; for who would deny that they 

 well knew how to lay down wires] He 

 came among them armed only with a pole 

 or poles eleven feet long, a coil of common 

 wire and a compass; and with these weapons 

 he trusted he should, in a few minutes, con- 

 vince them that he could wield an agricul- 

 tural power not to be despised. But to pro- 

 ceed. He wrote to the proprietor of the 

 farm at Findrassie, near Eglin, (Dr. Fors- 

 ter — not Faustus,) to open, with a lecture 

 on the subject, a large room which he had 

 built for agricultural purposes in the county 

 of Aberdeen. Dr. Forster, however, was 

 not able to do so ; but, with a practical libe- 

 rality which marked him a true agricultu- 

 rist, he was kind enough to write an account 

 of the subject, which was the novel and sur- 

 prising one of the influence of electricity 

 and galvanism on the growth of plants, as 

 applicable to agriculture. Many years since, 

 Mr. Forster read in the Gardener's Gazette 

 the account of an experiment made by a 

 lady, which mainly consisted in a constant 

 flow or supply of electricity — to be aflbrded 

 by a common electrical machine — to pro- 

 ceed from a summer or garden-house, and 

 which was difllised, by wire, to a fixed por- 

 tion of the surrounding ground; and the 

 effect was, that vegetation did not cease in 

 the winter on the spot under the influence 

 of this wonderful power; and that what 

 snow fell during the continuance of the ex- 

 periment never remained, as it did on the 

 rest of the garden around. This impressed 

 Mr. Forster very much, and induced him to 

 place a small galvanic battery in action on 

 a grass-plot ; and although the power from 

 it was very small, still the effect produced 

 fully confirmed the lady's experiment. This, 

 and other facts which Mr. Forster collected, 

 led him to think that the electricity of the 



