136 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[September 



" As a general rule, it will be safe for farmers 

 to refuse all agencies, as the risk of getting 

 swindled is altogether too_ great. Traveling 

 agents come along and propose to farmers to 

 take an agency to sell this or that thing. The 

 story is a plausible one ; the farmer is to be 

 the only agent in the vicinity — the goods are 

 of a salable kind, and are not to be paid for 

 until sold — while the profits to the fanner, 

 who sees but little ready money, seem so 

 liberal, that the offer is a really tempting one. 

 StUl, we say, don't do it. If all were as repre- 

 sented, it would be another thing ; but there 

 is quite sure to be a catch somewhere — some 

 "after clap," as old Col. D. used to say — 

 and the chances are so gi'eat that a traveling 

 agent of this sort is a swindler, that it is 

 safest to give them all a wide berth. The 

 spring-bed swindle is one of these agency 

 affairs that farmers should look out for. It 

 appears to be mostly caiTied on in New Eng- 

 land. A smooth-tongued cliap comes along 

 to establish agencies ou behalf of the manu- 

 facturer ; he finds some one willing to act as 

 agent for the sale of the goods, from wliom he 

 gets an obligation to pay for the goods when 

 sold, and an order for the goods to be sent. 

 The beds come, the agent pays freight, and 

 takes them home. In a few days a party, 

 claiming to be the manufacturer, comes along 

 to collect the bill. The agent says that the 

 goods were oaly to be paid for when sold ; but 

 this is laughed at ; they never sold goods in 

 that way ; no one had authority to make any 

 such terms ; tliere was the agent's, order for 

 the goods, and there was the bill, (some $"200 

 or $300,) and if not paid for at once, it would 

 be put in the hands of a lawyer for collection. 

 The pretended manufacturer understands the 

 blufl-game, and too often succeeds in frighten- 

 ing his victim into paying the bill, or in set- 

 tUng the matter by giving him .S50 to take 

 away his beds. One of our readers who had 

 accepted the agency, and was called upon and 

 threatened, wrote to us for advice in the case. 

 Our advice was to stick to the agreement and 

 let him sue. We afterwards learned that a 

 lawyer from a neighboring town came to collect 

 the bill ; finding that he could not get the 

 amount, he proposed to settle for S75, then 

 for $50, and then for $25, and take the beds 

 back. But our correspondent would pay no- 

 thing, and agree to nothing, except take the 

 beds to the depot, which he did, and comes 

 out of the transaction minus the freight 

 he paid when he took them. This shows 

 that in such cases firmness is a good invest- 

 ment. 



The above swindle has also been carried on 

 to some extent in this county ; but when they 

 got hold of Mr. W., near this place, they got 

 hold of the wrong man. Mr. W. would not 

 only not pay anything, or compromise, but he 

 has actually held the beds for over a year for 

 freight paid, and for expense of hauling to his 

 place, and storage, and threatened to sue the 

 party for attempting swhulling and extortion. 



Wild-Cat Mming and Coal 00 Companies, 

 Prize Associations, Riverside Library Insti- 

 tutes, Lotteries, &c., are ahvayg as plenty as 

 blackberries, and the originators must find it 

 a lucrative business, considering the numbers 

 engaged in it ; and looking at the expense in- 

 curred in advertising, one must come to the 

 conclusion that more gulls are to be found in- 

 land than along any sea shore that has ever 

 existed. 



A neat swindle was perpetrated a few years 

 ago on a farmer living near the Susquehanna 

 river, in the following, or nearly a similar 

 manner. One evening a traveling trader, in 

 other words, a peddler called at a farm house; 

 he was better dressed than the general run of 

 these useful folks; this was no doubt to be 

 attributed to the fact that he was not of the 

 Tulgar needles and pins sort, for he was a 

 veritable silverware merchant. The farmer's 

 family did not indulge very much in liis ware, 

 only a few dollars, I believe, but by this time 

 our merchant was afraid to venture out, as he 

 did not like to expose his valuable stock of 

 knives and spoons to a possible misappropria- 

 tion by some unauthorized person, and so 



would the kind woman of the house keep him 

 over night. The request was readily granted 

 by the farmer and his wife. The next morn- 

 ing our roaming dealer in goods, made of 

 precious metal, complained of not feeling well, 

 and was afraid he would have to leave his 

 "case" in the care of the farmer, as he had 

 important business which must be attended 

 to ; he found himself short of about forty dol- 

 lars, of which he would be very thankful to 

 have the loan for a few days luitil he came 

 back for his "case." Would he be asking too 

 much y Oh, no ! the farmer was always ready 

 to help any dcsei"ving fellow-creature in 

 trouble. Our silverware dealer and the forty 

 dollars went forth ; neither have come back 

 yet. That " case" of " silver ware" is still at 

 the farm house, but the silver used in the 

 manufacture was not much — there was more 

 of it on that fellow's tongue. 



Frauds are harder to guard against than 

 either humbugs or swindles, as they generally 

 are deceptive with regard to quality. At the 

 present writing, artificial fertilizers are the 

 staple articles dealt in by the harpies who 

 hope to fatten on the farmer's well earned 

 savings. These men are too respectable to 

 deal in humbugs ; too cowardly to risk the fate 

 that sometimes overtakes swindlera, and so 

 they descend to a lower deptlHiy deceiving in 

 articles, the composition of which few men 

 are capable of determining. 



We believe that business of all kinds, in- 

 tended for the public good, should lie as un- 

 trammeled as possible, but we midoubtedly 

 need a strict license law for dealing in fertil- 

 izers. This subject has been agitated in 

 various parts of the State, but I think that in 

 most cases a uniform license has been thought 

 of, wliereas the license should be as to the 

 amount sold. To guard against frauds, the 

 dealer, in receiving his license, must be held 

 in bonds that he state on each package the 

 composition, and heavy penalties be provided 

 for not doing so, or for making fraudulent 

 statements. 



In a nut shell : To avoid humbugs, use 

 common sense. To keep clear of swindlers, 

 sign nothing. To i>revent frauds, deal only 

 with known reliable parties. — A. B. K. 



For The Lancakteh Farmer. 

 DEW, AND ITS CAUSE. 



What we term dew is the " moisture pre- 

 cipitated from the atmosphere on the surface 

 of bodies. It is thus distinguislied from fog, 

 which is moisture precipitated within the 

 atmosphere." — D. Olmstead. The cause and 

 nature of dew has been a subject of much di.s- 

 cussion and experiment since the days of 

 Aristotle, until more successfully investigated 

 by Dr. Wells, in 1814. He seems to have 

 clearly established the fact, " that tlio cold is 

 the cause of the dew;" I quote, "for he 

 found, 1st, That in certain circumstances 

 bodies would become colder than the air with- 

 out being dewed, whence it is obvious that the 

 cold could not be the effect of tlie dew ; and, 

 2nd, That when dew was formed, its quantity 

 and degree of cold that appeared with it, at 

 different times, were very far from Ijeing 

 always in the same proportion to each other." 

 He also invariably found that bodies became 

 colder before dew began to appear on them. 

 The formation of dew is therefore a phenom- 

 enon precisely of the same kind as the precipi- 

 tation of moisture which takes place on tlie 

 outside of a vessel into which a liquid colder 

 than the air is poiu'ed. 



The difl'erent degrees of temperature of the 

 air determines the quantity of water contained, 

 and that the quantity is greater as the tem- 

 perature is higher. Hence, when a stratum 

 of air comes in contact with colder bodies, a 

 precipitation takes place — thus a second 

 stratum, and so on, with great rapidity — and 

 in a short time a cooUmj body is covei-ed with 

 dew and moistiu'c. The laws of radiation of 

 heat explain the cause why bodies, when ex- 

 posed to the cloudless sky in clear and calm 

 nights, become colder than the surrounding 

 atmosphere, as explained by Leslie and Rum- 

 ford. We know that during calm and serene 



nights, the upper parts of the grass radiate 

 their heat into the regions of space, from 

 which they receive back no heat in return ^ 

 its lower parts, from the smallness of their 

 conducting power, transmit little of the 

 earth's heat to the upiier parts, which at the 

 same time receiving only a small quantity of 

 the atmosphere, and none from any other 

 lateral body, must remain colder than the air, 

 and condense into dew its watery vapors, if 

 this be sufliciently abundant. 



On this point Mr. Prevost, of Geneva, (radi- 

 ation of heat) differs from Sir J. Leslie, who 

 ascribes the effect to the descent of cold air 

 from the upper regions of the atmosphere : 

 "The application of the ffithrioscope, " he re- 

 marks, "has not only ascertained the exist- 

 ence, but measured the intensity, of the cold 

 pulses which are at all times darted downwards 

 from the successive strata of air, though often 

 partially intercepted by clouds, or more com- 

 pletely obstructed by low fogs. It may be 

 computed that in fine bright evenings those 

 cold pulses, rained from the sky, are sufficient 

 alone to depress the temperature of the ground, 

 according to the seasons, sometimes eight de- 

 grees, but generally about three degrees of 

 Fahrenheit's scale. The blades of grass, 

 thus chilled from exposme, cool in their turn 

 the damp air which touches them, and cause 

 it to drop its moisture. "(Encyclopedia Bri- 

 tauuica, art. "Dew.") 



My attention was called to this subject by a 

 letter from a graduate of Franklin and Mar- 

 shall College, Rev. Jas. G. Dengler, pastor at 

 Sellersville, Bucks county. He says: "A 

 question by a number of my young friends 

 here. I felt unable to answer it. It is a 

 question I often asked myself. " It is about 

 tlie dew-drop that gathers on the very points 

 of a spile of grass" — "a sea of pearls," as 

 Gfethe calls it — strange that a drop of dew,- 

 should, contrary to the law of gravity, gather 

 in that manner. How do you account for it ? 

 What law governs it V I cannot account for 

 it satisfactorily on capillary attraction, along 

 the grooves on leaves,as water or oil is drawn 

 up by a wick. Dr. Fretz, a botanist, and one 

 of my members, thinks there is some electri- 

 cal principal at work in bringing about the 

 result. Would you please give us your opin- 

 ion; we could find nothing on the subject to 

 explain it. 



I mention tliis because few have given the 

 subject thought, and the question certainly 

 involves more than we think. I find in the 

 old American Cyclopedia seven full pages 

 giving the conflicting experiments of Mr. Du 

 Fay, of Paris, and those of Muschenbroeck, 

 and Dr. L. Stocke: " none fell on rusty iron," 

 polished metal scarcely any, if at all, was 

 visible. Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff, 

 relates his experiments. Dr. Hales. The 

 oxydation of metals renders tlieiii also unfit 

 for the experiment. A dispute of considerable 

 interest took place some years ago between 

 Mr. Du Fay and Mr. Muschenbroeck respect- 

 ing the origin of dew. 



Mr. Dalton sums up : 



1st. " That aqueous vapor is an elastic fluid, 

 std generis, diffusible in the atmosphere, but 

 forming no chemical combination with'it." 



2d. "That temperature alone limits the 

 maximum of vapor in the atmosphere. " 



3d. "That there exists at all times, and in 

 all places, a quantity of aqueous vapor in the 

 atmosphere, variable according to circum- 

 stances." 



4th. "That whatever quantity of aqueous 

 vapor may exist in the atmosphere at any 

 time, a certain temperature may be found, 

 below which a portion of that vapor would 

 unavoidably fall, or be deposited, in the form 

 of rain or dew, but above which no such dim- 

 inution could take place, chemical agency 

 ajiart. This point may be called the extreme 

 temperature of vapor of that density." 



5th. "And that whenever any body colder 

 than the extreme temjieraturc of the existing 

 vapor is situated ui the atmosphere, dew ia 

 deposited upon it, the quantity of which va- 

 ries as the surface of the body and degree of 

 cold below the extreme temperature. " 



