NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



271 



Irol," be likely to weigh heavily in favor of white 

 paint, with the reflecting portion of the community. 



Arguments to be effective, must be supported by 

 facts. We may give opinions, but they will almost 

 always be coincident with preconceived notions. I 

 am not prepared at present to show the compara- 

 tive durability of white and of colored paints, and 

 therefore I do not recommend any particular color, 

 yet I am decided in the opinion tliat white is not 

 ^'■the color.'^ Perhaps some other person can give 

 us some statistical information upon the subject; if 

 so, I hope he will do it, for in this way he will 

 assist enquirers in deciding which is the best paint. 



I J. Varney. 



Sandwich, N. H., 7 Mo. 25lh, 1851. 



13^ By some mistake, Mr. Editor was prefixed 

 to a former communication of friend Varney, 

 which is contrary to the style of the Society of 

 Friends. 



For the New En!;land Farmer. 

 COLOR OF COUNTRY HOUSES. 



Mr. Cole: — Your correspondent J. W. takes it 

 in high dudgeon, because everybody don't choose 

 to endorse his absurd notions in regard to the color 

 of country houses; and one would suppose from his 

 manner that he thought his opinion was law. It 

 strikes me that his sneering about lucak spots is in 

 quite as bad taste as his notions of color. This 

 calling your opponent a fool, is often resorted to 

 by those who have neither wit nor brains enough 

 to back up by a sensible argument any statements 

 they rnay make or have made — and this brings to 

 my mind tlie parallel of the boy at school, who 

 when at variance with his companion, said with a 

 pout of the lip, "Well, I don't care, if I can't flog 

 you, ril make mouths at your sister." 



In regard to Mr. Downing, I don't claim for him 

 infallibility, but I do claim for him the honor of be- 

 ing, by common consent, the best writer on Rural 

 Architecture extant. Doubtless he has made mis- 

 takes in his lifetime and who has not! indeed, it is 

 hardly possible that the immaculate J. W. himself 

 may be laboring under a slight mistake, at this mo- 

 ment — but be that as it may, whatever mistakes, if 

 any, Mr. D. may have made, certain it is, he nev- 

 er made such an egregious blunder as to suppose 

 that a very white house, with very green blinds, 

 set down in the midst of a bare plain, was the acme 

 of good taste in rural architecture. 



Where are we to look for correct taste in paint- 

 ing, sculpture, architecture, or any of the tine arts, 

 but among those who have spent a lifetime in their 

 pursuit — and certainly when we find any one point 

 in any art upon which professors of that art all 

 agree — it would seem to any reasonable man tol- 

 erable good evidence of its correctness. So it is 

 in regard to neutral tints for country houses — the 

 arguments advanced in their favor never have been, 

 nor can they be refuted, J. W. notwithstanding. 



Boston, July, 1851. j. b. d. 



A Genuine Irish Bull. — An Irisluuan dropped 

 a letter into the Westfield Post Office, the other 

 day, with the following memoi-andum on its corner 

 for the benefit of all indolent postmasters into whose 

 hands it might fall : " Please hasten the delay of 

 tliisi" 



WATER. 



THE GRAND CONSTITUENT AND SOLVENT. 



Of organic bodies, whether vegetable or animal, 

 water is a large constituent during life, and a pow- 

 erful solvent after death. Potatoes, for example, 

 contain 75 percent., (by weight,) and turnips no 

 less than 90 per cent, of water, which explains, by 

 the way, the small inclination of turnip-fed cattle 

 and sheep for drink. A beef-steak strongly press- 

 ed between blotting-paper yields nearly four-fifths 

 of its weight of water. Of the human frame 

 (bones included) only about one-fourth is solid 

 matter, (chiefly carbon and nitrogen) the rest is 

 water. If a man weighing 10 stone were squeezed 

 flat under a hydraulic press, 7 1-2 stones of water 

 would run out, and only 2 1-2 stones of dry residue 

 would remain. A man is, therefore, chemically 

 speaking, 45 lbs. of carbon and nitrogen diffused 

 through 5 1-2 pails full of water. Berzilius, in- 

 deed, in recording the fact, justly remarks, that 

 the living organism is to be regarded merely as a 

 mass diffused in water; and Dalton, by a number 

 of experiments tried on his own person, found that 

 of the food with which we daily repair this water- 

 built fabric, five-sixths are also of water. 



The sap of plants is a solution of material mat- 

 ters, saline and organic, in water, which distributes 

 them so rapidly that its upward course through the 

 minute vessels (as observed by Lindley in the stri- 

 pules of the ficus elastica) looks like the rushing 

 of a swift stream. A pail full of water, suitably 

 impregnated with salt, is speedily sucked up by 

 the root of a growing tree immersed in it ; the salts 

 are assimilated, as is also a part of the water, the 

 remainder being evaporated irom the leaves. Food 

 or provisions may thus be artificially administered 

 to plants; and timber is thus hardened in France, 

 and even stained, whilst living, of divers brilliant 

 hues. As for evaporation from foliage, it is so 

 abundant that a sunflower perspires 1 1-4 pail per 

 diem, and a cabbage nearly as much — nay, it ap- 

 pears from valuable experiments published by Mr. 

 Lawes, of Rothamsted, that a wheat plant, daring 

 the period of its growth (170 days) exhales about 

 100,000 grains of water, so that, taking the ulti- 

 mate weight of the mature plant at 100 grains, 

 which is a full estimate, its mean daily perspira- 

 tion actually exceeds ten times its own mean 

 weight. At this rate an acre of growing wheat, 

 (weighing, at least, two tons at maturity,) should 

 exhale, on an average, fully ten tons of water per 

 diem. 



Of a plaster of Paris statue, weighing 5 lbs., 

 more than 1 lb. is solidified water. Even the iridis- 

 cent opal is but a mass of flint and water combined 

 in the proportion of nine grains of the earthly in- 

 gredient to one of the fluid. Of one acre of clay 

 land, a foot deep, weighing about 1,200 tons, at 

 least 400 tons are water ; and even of the great 

 mountain chains with which the globe is ribbed, 

 many millions of tons are water solidified in earth. 



Water, indeed, exists to an extent and under 

 conditions which escape the notice of cursory ob- 

 servers. When the dyer l)uys of tlie drysalter 100 

 llis. eacii of alum, carbonate of soda, and soap, he 

 obtains in exchange, for his money, no less than 

 45 ll)s. of water in the first, 64 lbs. in the second, 

 and a variable quantity, sometimes amounting to 

 73 1-2 lbs., in the third. 



Even the transparent ait we breathe contains in 

 ordinary weather about five grains of water diO'used 



