116 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



adaptation to the pui-pose for which it was con- 

 structed, rather than mere appearance. In any 

 case, use good materials, and have the work well 

 done, and you will probably have a barn as long 

 as you live, provided no accident befalls it. i 



A necessars' fixture to a barn is the cattle-yard, ! 

 which should be on the south or east side, for two 

 reasons, viz : it is warmer for the cattle, and the 

 ice thaws out sooner in the spring, so that the ' 

 manure can be drawn earlier. It should be as : 

 small as possible and accommodate the stock you 

 wish to keep, as it gives you better control over i 

 the cattle, and you have the manure on less i 

 ground, making it more convenient getting it. | 

 The fence should be of boards, made tight, and ; 

 sufficiently high to prevent the possibility of any . 

 animals jumping over. If it can be done with- i 

 out too great expense, water should be kept run- ^ 

 ning in the yard, but if this is not practicable, a j 

 well should be dug. After the yard is laid out, ! 

 and before the fence is built, take the plough and ; 

 scraper and make some spot in the yard, wher- i 

 ever the most convenient, considerably lower than [ 

 the rest of the yard, which must descend towards _ 

 this spot. Into this reservoir may be thrown suds, 

 muck, straw, weeds; and any refuse matter at j 

 hand, to absorb the liquid manure settling into it, , 

 and thus save a vast amount of valuable manure, \ 

 which nine-tenths of farmers waste. Thousands, 

 yea, tens of thousands of dollars are thrown away j 

 annually in this manner, which one day's work in ; 

 most cases would have saved. 



One-half of the barns are built on a knoll, and i 

 near a stream of water, the yard being left in a j 

 state of nature, thereby letting the best part of i 

 the manure run off into the stream. Now I ap- 1 

 prove of putting the barn on high and dry ground, 

 and I do not care how near to the stream, for that 

 is all the more convenient, and the higher the 

 ground, the better the yard, but do not leave it in 

 the shape of a cone, uuless you wish to ruin your 

 farm. Do not have a pair of bars near the barn, ; 

 or house, but supply their place by good, strong ' 

 gates, by which yen will save much time, and per- I 

 haps some vexation of spirit. An indispensable . 

 adjunct to the barn are eave troughs, with conduc- i 

 tors attached, to carry the water down into the j 

 cistern, as a drain to carry it off. It is, also, a I 

 good plan to have a room, either in the basement 

 or on the floor, for storing farm implements, such 

 as ploughs, haiTows, hay-racks, and all other tools 

 when not in use. The better way is to have a 

 building for that purpose, but as the young farm- 

 er cannot have all these things, he must make the 

 best use of what he has, and it is far better to 

 have such a room in the barn than none at all. 

 Should there be sheds attached to the barn, they 

 should be made to form part of the yard fence on 

 the side most exposed to the cold winds, thus 

 keeping the yard warmer. If sheep and cattle are 

 both kept in the same yard, they should be separ- 

 ated by a fence across the yards, and sheep ought 

 always to have a good warm shed to run under in 

 winter. 



In conclusion, I would say, keep the bam well 

 painted, and if a board gets loose, or any tiling 

 out of place, repair it immediately, and your barn 

 will have the appearance of a new barn for many 

 years. Agiucultukist. 



Xcw York, Feb., 1862, 



HOW COAL IS FOKMED. 



The land on which coal plants grew has passed 

 away ; no human eye will see their like again — no 

 human eye saw them, no human hand touched a 

 leaf of these gigantic trees and forms. No lim- 

 ner's art ever portrayed those dense forests, nor 

 surveyor's pen mapped down the broad estates on 

 which they rankly grew. But certainly as the rays 

 of light tell us of burning metals in the sun, so 

 will the segregation of the earthy paiticles into 

 which their long and creeping roots penetrated 

 the bedding of the grains of sand and clay which 

 intimately covered them up, tell us the story of 

 the ancient physical condition, imder whose iutiu- 

 ence lifeless trunks, and leaves and boughs be- 

 came converted into coal. 



Low were those ancient lands, surrounded by 

 marsh swamps, bounded by shallow estuaries, up 

 which salt sea water gently rose and fell ; one can 

 scarcely speak of tide, so smoothly between the 

 stems and undergrowth of water loving tree 

 rushes, and through the tangled jungle it sluggish- 

 ly flowed. Into the muddy waters of estuary and 

 lakes, and on the oozy ground around, the leaves 

 fell year by year, as autumn chills unclothed the 

 trees. As the trees too, in the roll of time, rotted 

 at their bases by the watery medium in which they 

 grew, toppled over, and became immersed in the 

 boggy soil under a surface coating of ferns and 

 humbler plants, mixed with mosses ; the rank 

 herbage ever growing, rotting and fermenting. 

 Green and verdant at the top, dark, black, heated 

 and distiUing out from the decaying vegetable 

 matter, globules of bitumen below, to mingle with 

 and penetrate the half-rotted, closely-matted mass 

 of leaves and fibres, and of porous wood. Thus 

 Avas the coal-seam formed. It was not open to 

 the day until it had dried into the turf, or rotted 

 into soil. But it was covered up at a certain stage 

 of its elaboration, and preserved for human use. 



It may have completed in the earth the process 

 of its conversion into coal, but it was originally 

 the produce of the debris of a living vegetation 

 buried under a covei-ing of mud. The accumula- 

 tion might have long been going on near the sur- 

 face, new bitumen seci-eting below ; going on for 

 ages before the mass was buried in. Covered in 

 at last, stratum after stratum of mud and sand 

 are piled over it, the weight of the superincum- 

 bent materials presses down the spongy fibrous 

 upper part of the future coal-seam into the bitu- 

 minous lower portion, the semi-fluid bitumen is 

 squeezed upwards among the compressed fibres, 

 and forced into the pores of the wood, the thick- 

 ness of the vegetable bed is reduced, and it be- 

 comes an almost solid mass of wood and vegeta- 

 ble fibre, impregnated with the bitumen distilled 

 from itself. If it had parted with its gases and 

 bitumen before it had been covered in, it might 

 have become fossil heat. But coal, the produce 

 would never have been. Briefly, then, such was 

 the origin of coal. This view of the matter ex- 

 cludes at once the anthi-acites from any right to 

 the terra of coal. Next, to dispose of the lignites. 

 Lignites may, or may not at some futui-e time — 

 ages to come — be converted into coal. They are 

 not coal yet ; they are still ligneous. 



The wood structure is so well preserved in the 

 brown coal of Switzerland and Germany, that in 

 some places it is used for rafters, beams, and oth- 

 er building purposes. The stages of elaboration 



