1862. 



NEW ENGLAND FARIVIER. 



473 



bish till you begin to move them and they fall in 

 pieces, and you don't know it then, but persist in 

 packing them up and carrying them away for the 

 sake of "auld lang syne," till set up again in your 

 new abode, you suddenly find that their sacred- 

 ness is gone, their dignity has degraded into din- 

 giness, and the faded, patched chintz sofa, that 

 was not only comfortable, but res])ectable, in the 

 old wainscotted sitting-room, has suddenly turned 

 into "an object" when "lang synes" go by the 

 board, and the heir-loom is incontinently set 

 adrift. Undertake to move from this tumble- 

 down old house, strewn thick with the debris of 

 many generations, into a tumble-up, peaky, perky, 

 plastery, shingly, stary new one, that is not half 

 finished, and never will be, and good enough for 

 it, and you will perhaps comprehend how it is that 

 I find a great crack in my life. On the further 

 side are prosperity, science, literature, philosophy, 

 religion, society, and all the refinements and 

 amenities, and benevolences, and purities of life — 

 in short, all the arts of peace and civilization and 

 Christianity — and on this side — moving. — Atlantic 

 Montlihj. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 HARD COAL ASHES, 



Mk. Editor : — On page 362 of your August 

 number I find an article on the use of hard coal 

 ashes for manure, which induces me to make a 

 suggestion that they are much more valuable as 

 an absorbent of the fertilizing elements in ma- 

 nures, than is generally supposed, and may be 

 worth something as a disinfectant. 



It will not be difficult for some of your readers 

 to try the experiment as I have, and satisfy them- 

 selves. My belief is, that all the ashes and all the 

 drainage of all our cities should be combined, and 

 thus, out of two evils, bring an inexhaustible good. 

 I have no doubt but that the effluvia proceeding 

 from the slaughter-houses in Brighton could be 

 thoroughly neutralized by the use of anthracite 

 coal ashes, and the atmosphere rendered as pure 

 as in any other neighborhood. 



It will be found, upon mixing a moderate pro- 

 portion of ashes with the contents of the privy, 

 cess-pool or hog-pen, that in a short time the of- 

 fensive odor has entirely disappeared. 



It is not expelled, as by the use of chlorides, 

 but held in combination until, by its use as ma- 

 nure, the earth and roots of plants liberate and 

 use it. 



Dry peat, charcoal dust and other like substan- 

 ces have the same power. But nothing is so cheap 

 as hard coal ashes, which have generally been 

 considered only a nuisance. D. Wilder, Jr. 



Important Commercial Projects. — A cor- 

 respondent, writing from Rio de Janeiro, under 

 date of July 14, says that Senor Tavarres Bastos, 

 a leading and eloquent statesman, has introduced 

 into the Brazilian Chambers a proposition (1st,) 

 to give subsidy to any company, (meaning a 

 United States company,) of $100,000 to run a line 

 of steamers monthly between New York and Para, 

 to connect with the Brazil mail steamers which 

 run between the Amazon and the La Plata, touch- 

 ing at all intermediate ports ; or (2d,) to give the 

 same United States steamers a subsidy of $300- 



000 to make regularly monthly trips from New 

 York to Rio, touching at six or eight of the prin- 

 cipal ports of the Empire, beginning with Para. 

 Another proposition has been laid before the 

 Chamber, which will doubtless pass, that in two 

 years' time, the Amazon, and its branches, be 

 thrown open to the flags of the world ; and in five 

 years hence the river Plata and its vast continua- 

 tions (the Parana and Paraguay,) which are most- 

 ly in Brazil, be also tlirown open to the commerce 

 of all nations. 



LACUSTRINE HABITATIONS. 



A work has been recently published in France 

 by M. Troyon, entitled the "Lacustrine Abodes of 

 Man,^^ or the relics of primeval antiquity discov- 

 ered in the lakes of Switzerland. It appears that 

 the boatmen on those lakes have, from time imme- 

 morial, observed in various places near the shore, 

 under the calm transparent Avater, the heads of 

 numberless wooden stakes protruding through the 

 deposit which is generally found at the bottom. 

 Along with these, large blocks of wood have here 

 and there been visible, stags' horns of great size, 

 bones, and fragments of pottery. There was a 

 lurking traditional belief that these were the re- 

 mains of dwellings, occupied by the people of an- 

 cient times, who built on the lakes in order to 

 shelter themselves from wild beasts. For centu- 

 ries, however, no one had been tempted to look 

 closer into these scattered fragments of a forgot- 

 ten world. It was not until the year 1854 that 

 the attention of scientific men was called to the 

 discovery, and the result of the earliest investiga- 

 tions on the subject was to establish the existence 

 of a submerged "lake village" in a certain part of 

 Lake Zurich. This discovery was rapidly followed 

 by others. Similar sites have been traced in Lakes 

 Constance, Geneva, Neufchatel, Burine, IMorat, 

 Sempach, and in several smaller ones. Indeed, 

 they now seem to multiply in the note books of 

 archaeologists with almost inconvenient rapidity. 

 Two years ago twenty-six such village sites had 

 been desqi-ibed in the Lake of Neufchatel alone ;. 

 twenty-four in that of Geneva ; sixteen in that of 

 Constance ; and the amount of ancient objects re- 

 covered from their debris has reached a truly for- 

 midable magnitude. Twenty-four thousand of 

 these have been raised from a single locality in 

 Lake of Neufchatel. "We are still very far," says 

 M. Troyon, "from having recovered all the relics 

 imbedded in the silt of the lakes and peat of thje 

 valleys. Nevertheless we are by this time ac- 

 quainted with a sufficient number of points of re^ 

 markable richness to enable us to give, by their 

 description, an idea of that ancient population 

 which had the habit of living on these waters." 



These people were of smaller statue than the. 

 present inhabitants of Europe, as is shown by th^- 

 diminutive size of their ornaments, and in ])artiof- 

 ular by the grasp of the handles of their im])lc-*- 

 ments. They were a race of hunters ; arrow- 

 heads and lance-heads and the bones of wild ani- 

 mals are heaped around their dwellings. Tlwy 

 were also pastoral, for the bones of sheep and ox- 

 en, and in some instances of a small species of 

 horse, are found in close juxtaposition with those 

 of the deer, the wild boar, and other beasts of the 

 forest. They were, to some extent, agricultural, 

 for grains of wheat and barley, kernels of culti- 



