AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 515 



Mr. Lindley, of New-Haven (Conn.), exhibited a working model 

 of a grain sowing machine to sow more evenly than any broad 

 casting, and at tlie rate of from twenty to thirty acres a day of 

 suitable smooth land, and to harrow it in at the same operation. 

 Tlie machine for practical use is drawn by a single horse with a 

 driver seated upon the machine. 



James N. Brewster, of Princeton (N. J.), exhibited a model of 

 his new windmill, self-regulating, may be made by almost any 

 man out of wood only — cannot be damaged by wind, and costs 

 (if made by Mr. Brewster) al^out thirty dollars. Members exa- 

 mined it, and general approbation of it was heard. 



President Pell announced the regular subjects of the day (viz): 



" The necessary and most advisable preparation for spring 

 work in farms and gardens." " Cultivation of oats,'- and " Irri- 

 gating machines.'' 



A NEW TEXTILE PLANT. 



Solon Robinson read a letter from Ezra S, Carr of Albany 

 Medical College upon the subject of a new textile plant, found 

 growing wild upon the prairies of Wisconsin. This plant is pro- 

 bably the Jisclepias Cornuti and may be worth the attention of 

 inquirers after new plants of the kind. The letter states as 

 follows : 



In the summer of 1853, one Mrs. Abby L. Beaumont, of Area, 

 Wis., discovered growing wild upon the prairies a singularly 

 beautiful flowering plant, probably of the Jisclepias family. She 

 marked it, and later in the autumn, after saving the seeds, trans- 

 planted it into her door-yard. Attracted by the beauty of the 

 flowers, and because she observed innumerable fine fibres inclosed 

 the brittle stem, and the seeds imbedded in silky cotton in the 

 pod-lining, Mrs. Beaumont planted the seeds, and found that 

 plants could thus be multiplied rapidly, and still further by divi- 

 sions of the original root. From her somewhat rude description, 

 the root is capable of propagating the species, like asparagus ; and 

 though the plant is biennial, bearing flowers and seeds the second, 

 year, when the flowering stalk dies and the new stools or root- 

 buds are ready to send up the following year's crop without the 

 trouble of seeding. The first year the plant grows from three to 

 four feet high, bearing abundance of fine soft flax; the second 

 year from five to seven feet in good soil, bearing flax, cotton and 

 seed, and the roots continue to send up seed bearing stalks after- 

 ward, I have not Mrs. B.'s statement by me of the amount, by 



