448 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
■which are shown in several of the engravings, 
are enormous structures, but quite destitute of 
any attractiveness architecturally, -windows and 
doors being for the most part dispensed Willi. 
Of late years the ice is hoisted into the houses 
by means of elevators moved b} r steam power. 
The elevators (figure 5) consists of an endless 
chain carrying shelves or ledges upon which the 
cakes of ice are placed and conveyed to the in- 
terior of the building. When the cakes arrive 
■within the ice-house, they are stowed away. 
It is necessary to have the mass as compact as 
possible, and care is taken to secure square 
edges to the cakes in order that they may stow 
closely together without any air spaces between 
them. The interior is lighted only b)' the open- 
ings through which the ice enters, and the 
strong light striking upon the translucent mass- 
es, among which the workmen are actively 
moving, produces a picturesque and novel ef- 
fect. In January, 1867, we gave an article upon 
gathering ice upon a small scale, with illustra- 
tions of the varioijs implements that are in use ; 
the same are most of them employed in large 
operations. The gathering of ice at Rockland 
Lake commenced in 1838, and for some years 
about 600 tons were stored. Now the Com- 
pany house at that point, 80,000 tons anuually. 
The ice is taken from the houses at the lake by 
a railroad, the cars of which are moved by a 
stationary power, to the Hudson River, where 
it is loaded into barges to be towed to New 
York, and into vessels for transportation else- 
where. The Company own a tonnage in barges 
and of steam tugs of 20,000 tons, and have fa- 
cilities at their depot upon the river for hand- 
ling and storing in vessels 1,000 tons per day. 
Besides the houses at Rockland Lake, the same 
Company have other houses at various points 
upon the Hudson, capable of storing 300,000 
tons of ice. The capital of the Company is 
$2,000,000. Next in importance to the Knick- 
erbocker is the Washington Ice Co., which has 
$1,000,000 of capital, and there are several 
smaller companies which supply the cities and 
towns near New York. It is estimated that 
these compauies together, give employment in 
the winter time, to between 4,000 and 6,000 men, 
and constant work to about half that number. 
Twenty-five years ago the hotels and other 
large consumers in New York, paid $20 per 
ton for their ice. Now, owing to the introduc- 
tion of machinery, through the better under- 
standing of the business, and the competition 
between rival compauies, the price is reduced 
to $5 per ton to hotels, and others, who con- 
sume large quantities of ice. The rates to 
families is not considered much above this price, 
when the waste of cutting into small pieces 
and cost of carting are taken into account. 
Unconscious Influence over Animals. — 
The horse is like his driver, and the dog like his 
master. A nervous, timorous man is almost 
sure to have a skittish horse, shying at anything 
unsteady, and a runaway if he gets a chance. 
Many a cow is spoiled by lack of patience and 
quietness in the milker, and the amount of milk 
depends more upon the milker than the pastur- 
age. If a man is afraid of a horse, the animal 
knows it before he goes into the stable. We 
have seen the most inoffensive cow in the herd 
so wrought upon by the nervousness of a green- 
horn son of Erin, as to dextrously plant her 
foot in his breast and send him rolling heels- 
over-head. A uoisy, boistrous fellow about 
fattening stiibles will cause a serious loss in gain 
of flesh to the animals. So important is quiet 
to them when they are digesting their food. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 72. 
Winter is coming on, and these long evenings 
we listen for the Deacon's step on the piazza. 
His is one of those genial faces that is always 
welcome. " Pretty hard times for farmers, 
Deacon," I said, a night or two ago. " They 
are so," he replied, with a smile so cheerful as 
at once to remind one of the fact that the Deacon 
had had a good crop of apples, and sold them 
at $3.00 a barrel, and that he had a dozen good 
hogs nearly ready for the butcher. The Dea- 
con is not what might be called a model farmer. 
He never feeds oilcake or uses guano. But he 
always manages to have something to sell, and 
he never seems anxious to get exorbitant prices, 
and yet somehow or other he always " hits it." 
He is never in a hurry, but accomplishes a great 
deal more than some of us who are always too 
busy to put things in their proper place, or do 
work in its proper time. The Deacon has been 
on his farm about 40 years, and has doubtless 
passed through worse seasons than this. At any 
rate, he is disposed to take a cheerful view of 
affairs at present. If wheat is low, butter is 
high ; if potatoes are affected witli the rot, they 
can be boiled up for the pigs — and pork brings 
a high price ; if corn is a failure on low land, 
he had a capital crop of peas in the orchard, 
and he does not care whether they are buggy or 
not, for he fed them all out to the pigs before 
the bugs could do any harm. Thus thinks the 
Deacon — happy Deacon, lucky Deacon. 
Nevertheless, times are hard. Wheat brings 
a low price — a price far below the actual cost of 
production. And the cause is not owing to a 
large crop. There would be some consolation 
if this was the case. But (he fact is that the 
wheat crop of the United States is not as good 
this year as last, and the crop in Europe is no 
better, while that of England is far inferior in 
yield and quality to the crop of 1868. A num- 
ber of circumstances have conspired to bring 
about the present low price — principally our 
indisposition to sell promptly and at a fair price 
in the fall of 1868. Had we sold then we should 
have been in a condition to hold now. By hold- 
ing on until the past summer and then selling 
at almost half what we could have got six or 
eight months before, we not only broke down 
prices, but so weakened ourselves financially, 
that we are now unable to hold our wheat, and 
are obliged to sell it at a price that will not pay 
the cost of raising and marketing it. The pro- 
ducers have had the upperhand for a few years 
past, now it is the consumers chance, and they 
will probably be as unwise as we were. They 
should lay in a full stock, for it is not likely 
that they will see prices so low again for some 
time. We have got accustomed to $2a$3.00 a 
bushel for wheat, and $1.00a$1.50 does not suit 
us at all. The wheat has cost us more to har- 
vest and thrash than ever before. Millions 
of bushels have been destroyed or injured in 
the field or in the stack— and not a little has 
heated badly in the granary after it was thrashed. 
It is a great mistake to force this damaged 
wheat on the market. Better feed it out to pigs 
or other stock. Boiled wheat is excellent for 
milch cows, and at the present price of butter 
it will pay well to feed the cows two or three 
quarts of wheat a day, either ground or cooked. 
I suggested it to one of my neighbors and he 
seemed horrified at the idea of feeding wheat 
to cows. And yet why not? Butter is high, 
good beef is scarce, at least in this section, and 
fat sheep cannot be found. There are plenty of 
"twelve shilling" sheep, but three and four 
dollar sheep are wanted. In fact, good meat of 
all kinds is in demand at good prices. Why 
should we not feed out more grain ? We do 
not need more stock in the country ; all that is 
needed is to feed it better. Good care and good 
feeding would double and treble its value, and, 
enrich our farms at the same time. 
Then see how we manage the pig business. 
In the Chicago market report to-day, the prices 
of pigs are quoted, " Stackers, 7* cents per lb. ; 
choice, fat hogs, 10 cents per lb.," live weight. 
I do not know what the price of wheat is where 
those hogs came from, but when a good deal of 
wheat is sold in Chicago at less than a dollar a 
bushel, it is easy enough to see that a farmer in 
the interior of the State, twenty or thirty miles 
from a railroad, cannot get a very high price 
for it at home. At Lansing, the Capital of 
Michigan, "choice white wheat" is quoted at 
90 cents, and amber, 80 cents per bushel. Now 
I am not sure that I know exactly what is meant 
by the term "stackers" as applied to pigs, but 
assuming that it means pigs bought for the pur- 
pose of fattening, let us look at the figures. 
The farmer who sold them, we will assume sold 
a lot of wheat at the same time for 80 cents a 
bushel. He sells say: 
10 hogs 200 lbs. each, (rDl^c $155 00 
100 bushels of wheat, @S0 cents "l'JS.00. 
$883.00. 
Now, suppose instead of selling his pigs and 
his wheat, the farmer had fed this 160 bushels 
of wheat to the pigs, and that 8 bushels gave 
100 lbs. of increase; the pigs would then weigh 
400 lbs. each, and would be termed "choice," 
and bring, or at least now bring 10 cents. The 
account stands thus: 
10 hogs, 400 lbs. each, @10 cents $400.00 . 
It is said that pigs are very scarce ; and I 
presume such is the case. Then why slaughter 
them when not more than half fat? The same 
paper that quotes amber wheat in Lansing at 
80 cents per bushel, quotes lard at 19J cents per 
lb. The figures stand there side by side, and 
are very significant. 
The Western farmers say they want a " large 
breed" of hogs. And yet there are thousands 
and tens of thousands of hogs slaughtered in 
the great grain-growing sections of the West 
that do not dress 200 lbs. In fact, judging 
from the market reports, a hundred hogs that 
will average 200 lbs. is considered a good lot. 
From this it is very evident that it is not so 
much a " large breed " that is wanted as better 
care and more feed. I sold a couple of pigs of 
the "small breed" a month ago, that dressed 
409 lbs. each. The butcher paid me 14'|j cents 
a lb. for thein, and my man brought me home 
for the two pigs, $118.61. I have some more 
that are about 14 months old, that have been 
running in a clover pasture all summer, and 
until the middle of October, with a feed of 
corn night and morning. I think they will lie 
better still. These pigs are of the small breed. 
And let me tell you that a big pig of the small 
breed is better— better for the farmer, and bet- 
ter for the butcher, and still better for the con- 
sumer — than a small pig of the large breed. 
"What breed are your pigs?" No matter 
about that. I do not know any good breed that 
will not do just as well as these have done. 
Much as we_ need improved breeds, we need 
improved feeders much more. It is no use for 
a farmer to get a good breed of pigs aud then 
half starve them. But the common error is to 
starve them half the year and surfeit them with 
com the other half. 
If we may place confidence in our statistics 
