Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. §(J1 



pump-logs or lead pipe. Such an apparatus should be capable of 

 being drawn by two stout horses, and handled like a plough ; but 

 there are mechanical difficulties in the way of this, that scores of 

 inventions that have been made have failed to overcome. The earth 

 must be pulverized for removal, and afterward raised and thrown out 

 at the sides of the ditch. The pulverizing may be done with a device 

 like a ploughshare, but for lifting and depositing the earth there are 

 only two or three ways, and each is defective. We can cause the 

 earth to slide up an inclined plane from the share, and out through 

 lateral chutes or spouts at the rear; but it has been found by experi- 

 ment that the dirt will clog and stop if the incline is more than twenty- 

 three degrees, and, if we make the incline as low as this, it becomes 

 so long before the material is raised to the desired height that the 

 whole machine is unwieldly and unmanageable. In place of the 

 inclined plane Ave can use an endless belt at a steeper incline, but this 

 is apt to clog where the dirt leaves the short for the belt, and also 

 complicates the apparatus so as to render it both expensive and liable 

 to get out of order. Another plan is to carry the earth upward by 

 means of a wheel, like a water wheel, with scooped buckets, mounted 

 upon a wheeled frame and rotated by gearing, something like that of 

 a mower. This principle has been adopted with success for large 

 excavators operated by steam power, but it will not work in a small 

 ditcher. On the whole, if any man will get up a machine for making 

 farm ditches that can be used by one man with an ordinary team, lie 

 will do a good thing for the public and for himself. 



Preparing Sumac. 



Mr. F. A. Richmond, Lehigh, Farmony, Penn. — We have hun- 

 dreds of acres covered with sumac, the most of it this season's growth, 

 very fine and thrifty, and would like to turn it to some use. We are 

 on the line of the L. V. R. R., 145 miles from New York. Do you 

 think we could make it pay to gather it and send to New York for a 

 market ? 



Professor II. A. Colton — The sumac which grows in the gentle- 

 man's section, and in fact throughout the northern States, from some 

 climatic cause, has not so much tannin as that from the south ; hence 

 it is not so valuable. Some claim that that from Missouri and other 

 western States has as much, but in the absence of any analysis we 

 may assume the price indicates the fact that it does not. The south- 

 ern has improved so much in quality that some of it has sold at $100 

 per ton, within ten dollars of the best Sicilian. The northern and 



