1871.1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
57 
small compass, is easily set up, and, though 
hardly substantial enough to bear rough usage 
upou a journey, may be made quite strong by 
Fi^ 5.— folded coop, 
a few brads and large carpet tacks. Several 
hundred were used at the recent exhibitions of 
the Connecticut and New- York Poultry Socie- 
ties, and gave good satisfaction. 
— ■ — ♦— ►— . ■ — 
Peat for Fuel. 
The money that has been sunk in the peat 
enterprise has been mainly for buildings and 
machinery for pressing and drying. When 
coal was selling for twice the present prices, it 
was calculated that peat could be sent into the 
cities and sold at a large profit. Machines were 
invented for pressing it into the smallest com- 
pass, to prepare it for transportation. When 
coal receded to the old prices, all these calcula- 
tions were upset, and most of the peat factories 
were sold for old lumber. The question of the 
economy of using peat for fuel, as it comes 
from the bog cut with the spade, dried in the 
sun, and stored in sheds, has never been tried 
on a large scale in this country. There are a 
few localities, like Block Island, where the for- 
ests have all been cut off, that have used peat 
successfully for a good man}' years. On this 
Island the wood was gone before coal bad come 
into common use, and the people were forced 
to buy wood from the main land at high prices, 
or resort to the peat bogs, which were numer- 
ous, and of good quality. It is quite possible 
there are other localities where the high price 
of fuel will make the use of peat economical. 
It is estimated that two tons of sun-dried peat 
will supply as much heat as one ton of anthra- 
cite coal. If peat can be put into the cellar or 
shed at half the price of coal, ton for ton, it 
FiiJ. 0. — FEED THOUGH FOR SHOW COOPS. 
will do to use it; if it cost less, there is econo- 
my in using it. A ton of sun-dried peat is 
worth about as much as a cord of oak wood. 
On some farms, where the wood is short, and 
coal is inaccessible or very high, it will proba- 
bly pay now to open the peat bogs for fuel. 
Peat is very widely diffused, and the farmer 
who has it upon his premises can test its value 
without any great outlay for tools or fixtures. 
The only tool needed is a good, long-handled 
spade. Most Irish laborers are familiar with 
the whole process of cutting and curing peat. 
It is cut in square blocks, about a foot long, and 
just large enough to be conveniently handled 
with the spade. After lying upon the bank, ex- 
posed to the sun and wind for a few days, it is 
turned bottom side up. As the drying process 
advances, the blocks are piled loosely in heaps, 
that give free circulation to the air. When suf- 
ficiently dried, the heaps of peat are carted to a 
rail pen, covered with boards, or to an open 
shed for storage, wdiere it may be kept indefi- 
nitely, without much danger of damage or loss. 
An expert workman woidd average, in a good 
bog, two tons of dried peat in a day. The cost 
of preparing it is less than that of wood. In 
most communities it costs a dollar a cord to cut 
and pile four-foot wood. It costs about two 
dollars a cord to work this up fine enough for a 
cooking-stove. If the wood and peat are con- 
sidered of no value, or of equal value, before 
they are touched, it would seem to be cheaper 
to get peat whenever the cost of cartage is 
equal. There are always difficulties in intro- 
ducing a new kind of fuel. Coal came very 
slowly into favor. Many a man sweated over 
the kindling of his first coal fire, and thought 
the man a fool who first mined coal. It did 
not burn well upon the open hearth, like wood. 
Even when lifted upon sticks of wood, for a 
grate, it burned slowly, and did not look cheer- 
ful. Iron grates, coal stoves and furnaces were 
needed to help combustion, and popularize the 
new fuel. It is one great step toward the use 
of peat for fuel that we have these inventions, 
for peat will generally burn well where coal 
does. Larger space will generally be needed 
for the fuel, for it is not so compact as coal. In 
some cooking-stoves, made for the use of wood, 
peat burns freely. As soon as it is found out 
that peat is available for the farmer and the vil- 
lager, there will be inventors enough to give us 
the best apparatus for burning it. We have 
no doubt that in many of the older parts of the 
country, where wood and coal are dear, and 
peat bogs are plenty, the time has already come 
to try peat. 
■ l M« M I ■ 
Cotton-Seed Meal. 
The large crop of cotton, approaching very 
nearly to the largest crop ever raised before 
the war, very properly turns the attention of 
farmers to cotton-seed meal as an article of prov- 
ender. It was coming into favor ten years 
ago, and mills were established in several 
places in the North to decorticate the seed, 
express the oil, and grind the cake into meal. 
The war stopped these mills, and for several 
years very little was heard of cotton-seed oil 
and cake. Attention is now turned to these 
articles with new interest, and both are likely 
to be manufactured much more largely at the 
South than at the North. We are glad to hear 
of cotton-seed oil mills in the great center of 
the cotton trade. There are three at Vicks- 
burg, which made, last year, 160,000 gallons of 
oil and 4,000 tons of cake. In New Orleans 
there are five mills, using up 2S,000 tons of 
seed. There are also mills at Memphis and 
Mobile. Formerly, the planters dumped this 
seed into the nearest creek to get rid of it. In 
later years they turned it to use for manure, 
dropping it in the hill for corn and cotton, after 
a slight fermentation. It is now worth about 
ten dollars a ton at the gin. A ton of seed 
yields about 1,000 pounds of seed after the 
fiber and hull are stripped off, and this will give 
about 40 gallons of oil and 750 pounds of cake. 
The oil is used for various purposes in the aits, 
and the cake is ground up for cattle food, and 
sold at about forty dollars a ton. Large quan- 
tities of the cake are exported to England, 
where it is coming into competition with lin- 
seed cake. It only needs to be better known 
at the North as an article of provender to rival 
our grains and roots. There need be no ap- 
prehension about a market. We can take all 
the South can afford to sell. We have no doubt 
it is very bad policy for the planters to sell the 
seed so extensively as they do. The manure 
made from the meal is exceedingly valuable as 
a fertilizer, worth nearly as much, ton for ton, 
as the raw meal. Planters are now learning 
the economy of using manure, and are buying 
largely of guano, fish manure, phosphates, and 
other manufactured manures. They are also 
buying grain of the North-west with which to 
feed their mules, and to make their bacon. If 
their own plantations can furnish in tho cotton- 
seed the provender and the manure they are 
buying, it would seem to be very poor policy 
to be sending abroad for these articles. Some 
are prejudiced against the cotton-seed meal 
from the use of the article as it was first pre- 
pared. The seed was pressed without removing 
the lint and shell, and these sometimes injured 
cattle. But now nearly all the seed is decorti- 
cated, and the meal i-i used with as much safety 
as linseed oil-meal or corn. The only trial of it 
we ever made was in feeding milch cows, and 
this was in connexion with cut ha} r , corn fod- 
der, sugar-beets and mangel wurzels. The cot- 
ton-seed meal was sprinkled upon the cut hay, 
and used once each day, in about the same 
quantity as we had been using corn-meal. The 
flow of milk was increased, and we should have 
continued the use of it, if it had been in the 
market. Some animals manifest a decided 
aversion to it at first. This can be overcome 
by mixing it in small quantities with corn- 
meal or with roots at first, until they acquire a 
taste for it. The estimated value, in gold, put 
upon cotton-seed cake as a fertilizer by Pro- 
fessor Johnson, is $21.60. It loses very little of 
this value by feeding, and the best way of ap- 
plying it is to pass it through the manger first. 
It is quite as valuable as linseed oil- cake for 
feeding, and worth a third more as a fertilizer. 
•-. — ■«- — ►-« 
Pigs Losing TirEni Tails. — A correspondent, 
" A. B. H.," writes : "Grease the tails when the 
pigs are born, and I will guarantee that they 
will not come off." — This may be true, and at 
any rate so simple a preventive is worth trying, 
but we much doubt its efficacy in all cases. 
The trouble is caused by a ring, supposed to be 
of a fungoid character, growing round the base 
of the tail. If taken in time, before it has com- 
pletely girdled the tail, its growth may be 
checked and the tail saved. But when the ring 
is once around the tail, it is almost impossible 
to save it. Carbolic soap and glycerine, with a 
little carbolic acid mixed with it — say one part 
of carbolic acid to ten parts of glycerine — is 
likely to prove as efficacious as any other rein- 
ed} 1 . We have generally depended on petro- 
leum, and we have saved some tails, and some 
we have not. We have never lost a tail from a 
thorough-bred pig, but have lost a good many 
from cross-bred pigs and grades. The so-called 
Cheshires, or Jefferson County breed, seem to be 
particularly liable to lose their tails, and such is 
the case to some extent with the Yorkshires. 
The black pigs, when thorough-bred, are not, 
in our experience, affected with the disease. 
