FARMERS' REGISTER— MANGEL WURTZEL— DRY STONE WALLS, &c. 715 



the above-mentioned fishes were placed in (lie lake, 

 except perhaps tlie Brill; but others, as the silver 

 Bream, aj)pear to have introduced themselves. It 

 is even suspected that hybrid fishes have been pro- 

 duced, as several have been cau<^lit which were 

 unknown to persons well acquainted with the spe- 

 cies usually met with on tlie coast of Guernsey. 

 Mr. Arnold adds that sea fishes, after having been 

 naturalized in his lake, have been transferred to 

 ponds of spring water, where they have not only 

 lived, but done well ; and that such naturalized 

 fishes have been carried to a long distance, being 

 much more tenacious of lilis than those caught in 

 the sea. 



ALK FROM MANGKL "WURTZEL. 



By a Correspondent of the Coventry Herald. 



From seeing an article in a newspaper, in the 

 year 1829, describing how a good beverage might 

 be produced from the mangel wurtzel, I have made 

 a number of experiments, and have at length com- 

 pletely succeeded. In the article before alluded 

 to, it was stated, that a portion of about ten pounds 

 of the root to a gallon would n)ake a good liquor; 

 but with fifteen pounds weight to tlie gallon, an 

 excellent ale will be produced; the addition of two 

 pounds' weight of treacle to a firkin will be a 

 great improvement. One-third malt and two- 

 thirds mangel wurtzel liquor will make capital ale; 

 so that, even in tliis way, an important saving will 

 be effected. 



Our method is first to mash and clean the roots 

 well, take off the top completely, sci'ape (rather 

 })are) off the outer rind, slice and boil them until 

 soft and pulpy ; squeeze the liquor from the jndp 

 as much as possible, and then boil it again with 

 about six ounces of hops to nine gallons, and work 

 with yeast in the usual way. Thus a cottager, by 

 boiling his pot over his winter fire of a night, and 

 using the root as we have described, might seldom 

 be without a refreshing beverage even, the greatest 

 ])art of the year, for the roots may be kept in a 

 cool place, in a proper state for use, during most of 

 the winter. The leaves, stripped from the plant 

 in August and September, are valuable for the 

 cow or pig, not retarding its growth in the least ; 

 and the roots, boiled and mashed in the liquor, and 

 either milk or a small quantity of meal added, will 

 feed the pig at a trifling expense. 



The culture of this invaluable root is very sim- 

 ple. Let the single seeds be jnit on well manured 

 ridges, eighteen inches apart, and six or eight 

 inches between the plant; hoeing down and keep- 

 ing clean from weeds will be all that is necessary. 



THE EXTINCT DODO. 



From Jameson's Journal. 

 Naturalists have known for a long time, but 

 only through means of figures and descriptions, 

 executed in the sixteenth and the commencement 

 of the seventeenth century, a great bird, incapable 

 of flying, found in the Isle of France after its dis- 

 covery, but which appears to have been since 

 entirely extirpated. It was named Dronte, Dodo : 

 it is the genus Raphus of Maering, or the Didus 

 of Linnffius. All that is preserved of this l)ird, is 

 a head and foot deposited in the Ashmolean Mu- 

 seum at Oxford, and another fool, with a figure 

 painted in oil, after the living animal, which are in 

 the British Museum. Cauche, who also saw it in 



fhe Isle of France, has given an imperfect descrip- 

 tion of it, in which he says it had l)ut three toes, 

 which has caused some naturalists to form a second 

 species, under the name Didus Nazarenus, the 

 first being called Didus incptus. Leguat mentions 

 another bird, resembling the Dodo, found in the 

 Island of Rodrigue, and which has been named 

 Didus solitarius. Cuvier had sent him, by an ex- 

 cellent naturalist in the Isle of France, M. Desjar- 

 dins, the large bones of a bird found in the Island of 

 Rodrigue, in part encrusted with calc-tuffa, which 

 Cuvier conjectured might be those of the Dodo. 

 Judging from the cranium, sternum, and very 

 small humerus, the thigh-bone and tarsus, he sup- 

 posed they belonged to a gallinacious bird. M. 

 Blainville, in a learned memoir, endeavors to show 

 that the Dodo was a kind of vulture, which, he 

 says, it resembles in beak, head, claws, and other 

 circumstances of its organization. During his 

 visit to England, Cuvier compared the remains of 

 the Dodo preserved in the British Museum and in 

 that of Oxford with the bones sent to him by Des- 

 jardins, when he found that the heads were identi- 

 cal, but the tarsus is more elongated than that of 

 the British Museum, which, again, is thicker, but 

 shorter, than that of Oxford. There is, therefore, 

 some doulit as to the tarsus, but none as to the 

 head, which he therefore refers to the Dodo ; and 

 as this head, as also the sternum found along with 

 it, and also the humerus and femur, undoubtedly 

 belong to the GalliuEe, this bird falls to be placed 

 in that tribe. 



DRY STONE WALLS AS A FENCE. 



From the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. 



Stone fences are always built l)y the piece, and 

 paid for by the rood. A rood contains thirty 

 square yards of solid building. A wall that is 

 one yard high in the body will therefore contain 

 one rood in every thirty yards of its length. The 

 coping is never taken into the measurement, as its 

 varying height, according to the materials of which 

 it is composed, could afford no fixed data. In tak- 

 ing the contents of a wall, the gateways are mea- 

 sured over, as the trouble of building two corners in 

 each is considered equivalent to the labor of building 

 a piece of jdain work equal to the length of the gate- 

 way, which is generally about ten feet in width. A 

 rood of dry stone-wall generally costs ten shillings 

 in building. At the dimensions already given, a 

 wall requires at least thirty tons, or thirty double 

 horse cart-loads of stones, which, at four-pence j)er 

 load, the ordinary price of quarrying such stones, 

 will make the material equal to ten shillings per 

 rood. On an average of' distances on a farm, a 

 pair of horses and a man will require at least one 

 day to a load, drive, and empty the stones properly ; 

 thirty loads, which, at ten shillings per day, the 

 ordinary value of horse labor, will give other ten 

 shillings per rood; so that, on the whole, a stone- 

 fence will cost at the least thirty shillings per rood 

 of thirty square yards, or one shilling per square 

 yard of any dimensions. Hence we have only to 

 take the superficial contents of the body of a stone- 

 fence, and calculate that at one shilling per square 

 yard, in order to get the value of the whole. This 

 is a very simple formula of calculation. A man 

 by himself will seldom build more than one rood 

 per week, taking into account the chance of bad 

 weather; but two men will build more than two 

 roods per week under the same circumstances. 



