AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 77 



in West Newbury, ' has lately built a barn, which for con- 

 venience and durability of construction is worthy of much 

 praise. It is calculated better for the farmer's use than any 

 one we have seen. It is not too much to say that during 

 the haying season, the most busy season with the farmer, its 

 superior conveniences will save at least the labor of one man 

 on the farm. It is about eighty feet in length, thirty-four 

 feet in width, and twenty feet post. It has two floors, one 

 eight feet above the other ; on the upper of which the hay is 

 carried in. Mr. Newhall has favored the committee with a 

 plan of it for the benefit of the society.' 



The Shakers of Harvard, Massachusetts, have built a barn, 

 which is probably larger than any other structure of the kind 

 in the United States. The dimensions, we are told, are one 

 hundred and fifty feet in length, and forty-five in luidth. It 

 is four stories in height, and the calculation is to drive in on 

 the upper floors, from the hill side, and pitch the hay down, 

 thus rendering much hard labor easy. 



Barn-Yards. The following ' Remarks on the Construc- 

 tion and Management of Cattle Yards' are from the pen of 

 judge Buel, of Albany. 



Vegetables, like animals, cannot thrive or subsist without 

 food ; and upon the quantity and quality of this depends the 

 health and vigor of the vegetable, as well as of the animal. 

 Both subsist upon animal and vegetable matter, both may be 

 surfeited with excess, both may be injured by food not 

 adapted to their habits, their appetites, or their digestive 

 powers. A hog will receive no injury, but great benefit, from 

 free access to a heap of corn or wheat, where a horse or cow 

 will be apt to destroy themselves by excess. The goat 

 will thrive upon the boughs and bark of trees, where the hog 

 would starve. The powerful, robust maize will repay, in 

 the increase of its grain, for a heavy dressing of strong dung; 

 for which the more delicate wheat will requite you with 

 very little but straw. The potato feeds ravenously, and 

 grows luxuriantly, upon the coarsest litter ; while many of 

 the more tender exotics will thrive only on food upon which 

 fermentation has exhausted its powers. But here the analo- 

 gy stops : for while the food of the one is consumed in a 

 sound, healthy, and generally solid state, the food of the 

 other, before it becomes aliment, must undergo the process 

 of putrefaction or decomposition, and be reduced to a liquid 

 or aeriform state. 



I have gone into the analogy between animals and vege- 

 7^ 



