16 



GENESEE FARMER. 



Jan. 



Liming and Brining Seed Wlieat. 



Messrs. Editors : — I regret to see that your 

 correspondent, N. Simons, doubts the benefit of 

 salt and lime to prevent smut. I am so well 

 grounded in my belief of its efficacy, that it is 

 almost as daring an innovation on a well settled 

 principle, as to attack my belief in holy things. 

 As far as my experiencee goes, together with a 

 multitude of others, it is a sjjecific for thai disease, 

 and the only one that never fails, and when 

 properly and faithfully applied, prevents, in all 

 cases, its propagation. I have been in the con- 

 stant use of the practice for ten years past, with- 

 out even an appearance of smut, and one of my 

 neiglibors who constantly li7nes and brines his 

 seed, proclaims, that he will give one dollar each 

 for every smut head that can be found on his farm. 



A very careful experiment was made in Eng- 

 land, at great expense, under the patronage of 

 the National Agricultural Society, in which was 

 thoi-oughly tested all the popular notions in use 



Use of Green and Dry Wood — Loads — Loss. 



Some years ago I was led to ascertain the 

 weight lost by wood in drying or seasoning. 

 For this purpose I weighed green rock maple 

 and beech, taken from the sap wood and from 

 the heartvvood, and from both together, and 

 dried the specimens carefully in a warm oven, 

 so as to be more free from water than common 

 wood as ordinarily seasoned. The loss was from 

 one fourth to one third of the weight. This loss 

 was water. If the wood is burned while green, 

 this water must be evaporated and thrown into 

 the atmosphere, and a considerable part of the 

 caloric or heat produced by the combustion of 

 the wood must be in this way carried off, and 

 be of no use in heating or warming. 



To ascertain the caloj'ic lost, we must find 

 the weight of water in a cord of wood. In his 

 careful experiments on the combustion of wood, 

 Count RuMFORD proved that a cord of dry beech 

 weighs about 2800 pounds, which must be three 



preventive, with the foulest seed, and with \ fourths of the weight of the green beech ; that 



clean seed thoroughly impregnated with the fun- 

 gus known as smut, in which it was conclusively 

 proved, that it was not only propagated by the 

 foul seed, but that clean seed wet and rubbed 

 with the fungus, also produced it abundantly. — 

 The prevention that succeeded best was soaking 

 in stale urine, and drying with quick lime ; the 

 next best was strong brine and lime. So that I 

 cannot but suspect that there was something want- 

 ing in your correspondent's manner of preparing 

 his seed, or it is one of those vicisitudes of nature, 

 that sometime defeats an almost unerring rule. 



A strong case in point happened, a few years 

 since, under my own view and knowledge. A 

 father and son-in-law had each a summer fallow, 

 side by side, of equal quality, exposure, and soil. 

 Their own seed being rather objectionable on 

 account of foul seeds, they procured a load of 40 

 bushels from a distance of some 15 miles. On 

 arriving at their homes they divided the bags 

 according to their several wants. The father, 

 on looking at his discovered that it was consider- 

 ably smutted and immediately salted and brined 

 it ; the son-in-law was a disbeliever and omitted it. 

 They both sowed the same day, and under pre- 

 cisely the same circumstances. On harvesting, 

 Mie was clean and the other was foul. The 

 father got 94 cents per bushel, while the son-in- 

 law could only get offered 69 cents, it was so ex- 

 cessively smutted. 



Now, Messrs. Editors, under these circum- 

 stances I cannot help having a strong and relia- 

 ble belief in the efficacy as a preventive of smut, 

 in the use of brine and lime. 



December, 1847. L. B. Loveland. 



Remember the truism — that what is worth 

 doing at at all, is worth doing well. 



is, a cord of green beech must weigh 3700 lbs., 

 or taking the mean between 3- and k, must be 

 more thad 4900 pounds. In burning a cord of 

 green beech, at least 1000 lbs. of water must be 

 evaporated, and 1000 lbs. of water would fill 

 three barrels of 32 ale gallons, or nearly two 

 hogsheads of 63 gallons wine measure. The 

 quantity of caloric lost in this way may be esti- 

 mated in a rough way by tiie quantity of wood 

 consumed in evaporating three barrels or nearly 

 two hogsheads of water. 



The farmer will at a glance see that a cord 

 of green wood must form a load of nearly two 

 tons in weight, and he will probably conclude 

 that his team has a much greater load than is 

 commonly supposed. Timber three feet in 

 diameter will have a cord of solid wood in 

 every eighteen feet, and if 36 feet long, will 

 weigh above ^t'c tons. 



It is also obvious that in drawing green wood, 

 the farmer must load and transport three barrels 

 of water in every cord, or 60 barrels in twenty 

 cords, allowing that wood as commonly seasoned 

 in a summer, has lost only two-thirds of its water. 

 In drawing 100 cords of such dry wood there 

 will be a saving, in loading and transporting, of 

 200 barrels of water. A barrel of water con- 

 tains about five cubic feet, and weighs more than 

 300 pounds. 



In the combustion of 20 cords of green wood, 

 60 barrels of water must be evaporated. Now, 

 it takes six times as inuch heat to evaporate a 

 pound of water, as to heat a pound from 50° of 

 temperature to the boiling point. 



The economy in using dry wood is well un- 

 derstood by many. These views give adequate 

 reasons for it. Yet, it is to be feared, that many 

 a farmer does not use proper care in drying and 

 housing his wood. C. D. 



