No. 144.] 407 



timbers touch. Thus you will have a frame without a tenor, mor- 

 tice, or brace, and yet it is far cheaper, and incalculably stronger 

 when finished than though it was composed of timbers ten inches 

 square, with a thousand auger holes, and a hundred days' work 

 with a chisel and adze, making holes and pins to fill them. 



To lay out and frame a building so that all its parts will come to- 

 gether requires the skill of a master mechanic, and a host of men 

 and a deal of hard work to lift the great sticks of timber into 

 position. To erect a balloon building requires about as much me- 

 chanical skill as it does to build a board fence. Any farmer who 

 is handy with the saw, iron square and hammer, with one of his 

 boys, or a common laborer to assist him, can go to work and put 

 up a frame for an out building, and finish it off with his own la- 

 bor, just as well as to hire a carpenter to score and hew great 

 oak sticks, and fill them full of mortices, all by the science of the 

 " square rule." It is a waste of labor that we should all lend 

 our aid to put a stop to. Besides, it will enable many a farmer 

 to improve his place with new buildings, who, though he has long 

 needed them, has shuddered at the thought of cutting down half 

 of the best trees in his wood lot, and then giving half a year's 

 work to hauling it home and paying for what I do know is the 

 wholly useless labor of framing. If it had not been for the 

 knowledge of balloon frames, Chicago and San Francisco could 

 never have arisen, as they did, from little villages to great cities 

 in a single year. It is not alone city buildings which are sup- 

 ported by one another that may be thus erected, but those upon 

 the open prairie, where the wind has a sweep from Mackinaw to 

 the Mississippi, for there they are built, and stand as firm as any 

 of the old frames of New England, with posts and beams six- 

 teen inches square. 



THE USE OF LIME AND SALT IN AGRICULTURE. 

 Dr. Waterbury.— These inorganic substances, lime and salt, 

 are as necessary ingredients in the composition of animals as they 

 are of plants. We are not to suppose that they exist in the living 

 tissues in the same /orm as that in which we obtain them on ulti- 

 mate analysis. Changes are effected by the heat of combustion 



