No. 144.] 273 



main stream of migration from Mexico along the shores of the 

 Pacific Ocean. It has been seen here and in New Jersey — doubt- 

 less breeds here. 



The Secretary called the attention of the club to a peculiarity 

 in the tomato. Here are a ripe peach and a ripe tomato, and the 

 blades of two penknives. One has been covered lor two hours 

 with the juice of the tomato, and is not in the least corroded. 

 The other, covered with the juice of the ripe peach, was corroded 

 by it in a few minutes. The juices of all fruits, roots and plants, 

 corrode steel and iron rapidly. The venerable French physician 

 from St. Domingo, who first taught my father and me, in 1795, to 

 eat the tomato — then despised as the unwholesome love apple, 

 disgusting both in smell and taste — said that it did not, like other 

 vegetable matter, turn sour on the stomach, and that it produced 

 the same salutary effect on the liver that calomel does, without 

 any of the evils incident to the use of calomel. 



Henry Cowing, Esq., late of New-Orleans, spoke of his patent 

 agricultural inventions, and exhibited drawings of a portable 

 steam-engine for farm purposes — one of the peculiarities of which 

 is the driving wheels, fourteen leet in diameter, by which he 

 thinks it will enable him to cultivate crops, as the body of the 

 machine is so high it does not interfere with growing corn, or 

 cotton, or sugar cane, until it is over six feet high. The machine 

 is also calculated for applying to tiie purpose of locomotion on 

 common roads, or for city fire engines ; but his grand object is 

 to furnish a steam locomotive engine for plowing, harvesting, 

 threshing, and ordinary farm work. He also exhibited drawings 

 of gang plows, to be worked by steam, for cultivating crops three 

 rows at a time. Also, a gang that will turn the earth four inches 

 at a time, to any depth, according to the number of plows in the 

 gang — making a furrow two feet deep at one operation. Of 

 course this kind of machinery can only be operated in large fields, 

 such as may be made upon the great Western prairies. Mr. Cow- 

 ing talked as familiarly of plowing two feet deep as most farmers 

 do of two inches. He also exhibited a plan of a machine for a 



[Assembly, No. 144.] R 



