1861. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



473 



and Fort Yuma officers say they can make thirty 

 miles a day under 1000 pounds. The big humped 

 brutes are models of temperance, rising at four 

 o'clock, retiring at sunset, drinking water only, 

 and that but once in ten days, when two buckets 

 will suffice each animal. They are very healthy, 

 ugly, and tractable ; and the Alta, from which 

 paper we condense these facts, intimates that 

 packers ought to experiment with them in the 

 Sierra Nevada. 



SHELTER FOH A FKUTT GARDEN. 



A subscriber (J. P., of Oswego,) wishes to 

 plant a fruit-garden, where it needs shelter on 

 the north and west sides ; and asks advice about 

 the material for a hedge or screen, and the man- 

 ner of planting it. 



Reply. — If your garden were not to be so 

 large as you propose, we should say, use buck- 

 thorn for the hedge, allowing it to grow eight or 

 ten feet high. This plant can be had cheap, it 

 grows in almost any soil and exposure, and is not 

 subject to the attacks of the borer. But, as you 

 ■wish "shelter for standard pears and peaches one 

 hundred and thirty feet off," probably you had 

 better try something else. If large specimens of 

 the American Arbor Vitfe — say five or six feet 

 high — can be had from the woods near you, we 

 should say, make a k-ial of them. They will 

 transplant easily, and when established, will grow 

 a foot every year. They can be sheared and kept 

 within a small space as any hedge. The roots 

 will not extend a long distance, to rob fruit trees 

 of their needful food. 



If the Arbor Vitae cannot be easily obtained, 

 then try the Norway Spruce. This may be a lit- 

 tle more expensive at the outset, but it will sure- 

 ly succeed, and be every way satisfactory. Get 

 plants about four feet high, set the stems at least 

 six feet apart in the row, and they will soon 

 spread laterally so as to fill up the spaces be- 

 tween, and they will rise bigh enough to break 

 the winds from your most distant fruit trees. All 

 this, however, goes on the supposition that you 

 first prepare a wide, deep and rich border for 

 them to grow in. After they have become well 

 rooted and in vigorous growth, they should be 

 pruned a little in midsummer. This tree is much 

 used in Norway for hedges and screens, and 

 when well managed, makes a lofty green wall, 

 and a barrier stout enough to turn cattle. You 

 could, undoubtedly, set fruit trees within ten or 

 twelve feet of this hedge, without material injury 

 from its roots. — American Agriculturist. 



MIASM. 



On the wings of the viewless winds in Septem- 

 ber, the sickliest month of the year, there is waft- 

 ed an agency of disease and death, so ethereal in 

 its nature, so intangible to mortal sense, so insin- 

 uating, so all-pervading, that no alembic can de- 

 tect its presence, no prison-bar or palace-gate can 

 prevent its entrance. It is called "Miasm ;" it is 

 an emanation from the surface of the earth 

 wherever there is vegetation, moisture, and heat 

 equal to eighty degrees, and is the fruitful cause 

 of many diseases which ravage whole communities 

 at a time, such as agues, fevers, diarrhoea, dysen- 

 tery, cholera, pestilence, and plague. But its 



laws are known, by the educated physician, 

 and its destructive agencies can be averted by 

 avoiding exposure and fatigue in the out-door air 

 for the hours including sunrise and sunset, at 

 which time a hot breakfast and supper should be 

 eaten, by a good fire, in all prairie, flat, water- 

 course, and lake and sea-shore situations. If the 

 common people could only be induced to take 

 these simple, easy, practicable, and comprehensi- 

 ble precautions, these diseases would be prevent- 

 ed as epidemics, or arrested in their progress, as 

 certainly as that care can prevent the firing of a 

 town, and that water will put it out. These are 

 the teachings of science, and experiment has de- 

 monstrated their truth beyond a cavil. Yet who 

 will take these precautions ? — Hall's Journal of 

 Health. 



HOW BANK NOTES ARE MADE. 



The New York Evening Post informs us that 

 the American Bank Note company, located in 

 that city, is the most extensive establishment of 

 the kind in the world. It employs some of the 

 best artists in the country in sketching designs. 

 In some cases the artists send original sketches, 

 but generally embody the ideas suggested to them. 

 Barley's designs are frequent in our bank note 

 circulation, and are at once recognized by those 

 who are familiar with his style. The vignettes 

 are combined with portraits of individuals, and 

 the letters and lathe work which make up a bank 

 note. The drawings are sent from the design- 

 room to the pictorial engraving department. The 

 best artists are employed in this department, and 

 there are fifteen men, each at his own desk, who 

 work eight hours per day, and earn from $2,000 

 to $4,000 per year. Some of them work exclu- 

 sively upon "heads ;" others upon human figures. 

 In some cases a vignette which comprises land- 

 scape, sky, architecture and figures will pass 

 through as many different hands, and the separate 

 parts of the work, finished by artists who have 

 made that style a speciality, make the whole as 

 perfect as possible ; indeed, a first-class vignette, 

 unless a portrait, is hardly ever by one hand, and 

 a portion of it is "bit in" with acids, and after- 

 wards finished with a graver. The portrait-en- 

 gravers become so skillful, that they produce a 

 perfect likeness fiom a photograph, painting, or 

 engraving, and whatever work is in hand is given 

 to the artist who is best qualified to make a 

 finished picture of the kind required. All of the 

 vignettes, and much of the larger letter work, are 

 engraved on separate pieces of steel, from which 

 proofs only are printed. These pieces are taken 

 to the hardening-room, where two men^who are 

 experienced in handling steel, harden mem, by 

 heating and plunging them into water or oil. 



The hardened plates are placed under presses 

 of enormous power, and are "taken up" upon de- 

 carbonized dies of a cylindrical form, which are 

 afterward hardened, and are used to transfer the 

 impression to the plate from which the notes are 

 printed. Thus the work is doubly transferred be- 

 fore it is printed. The shading of the letters is 

 done by machinery, and in this way also is exe- 

 cuted that curious, complicated and beautiful 

 ground work for the figures, and from which the 

 tints on the face and back of a note are printed. 

 Such is the accuracy and uniformity of the geo- 



