76 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
ft 
m 
Hanging and Curing Tobacco. 
■ — 
' No class of people are more ready to investi- 
gate labor-saving plans, suggestions, or machine- 
ry, than American farmers. In this they differ 
essentially from many of their fellow craftsmen 
in other countries. 
1 Yet, even here no 
real labor-saving 
implement can be 
easily introduced 
into common use, 
unless it is patent- 
ed, and somebody 
made particularly 
interested to in- 
troduce it, explain 
its operations, and 
vaunt its good 
qualities. "We, 
however, here 
present to the 
readers of the Am- 
erican Agriculturist, 
W lHvliiNS a smi pi e an ^ ver y 
handy unpatented 
contrivance for 
hanging tobaccco, 
by which may be 
saved much labor 
and time, and 
from one half to 
two thirds the 
usual space. It 
is the invention of Mr. Joseph 
Reader, from whose island 
home in the Delaware we have 
drawn some lessons with refer- 
ence to the use of the White 
Willow. On visiting his tobac- 
co houses we were struck with 
the immense quantity of tobac- 
co suspended. Every inch of 
space seemed to be occupied. 
The engraving shows how it 
was hung. The stick at the 
top, from which the two cords 
depend, is 12 or 14 inches long, 
and extends between two joists 
upon which it rests. The joists 
are laid as for a floor, in the 
uppermost part of the building- 
only. The tobacco is cut, wil- 
ted and brought to the " curing 
sheds " or " tobacco house," as 
usual. The plants are unloaded 
upon a convenient table. A boy 
goes aloft, where there is a 
small movable windlass. This 
is set over the place where the 
tobacco is to be hung. A stick 
with the cords upon it, is lower- 
ed upon a hook attached to the 
windlass, to two men who stand 
at the table below. These men, 
handling the tobacco plants as 
fast as they can pick them up 
one after another, hang them 
^ upon the cord, which mean- 
while is being drawn up by the 
boy at the windlass. By a double-spooled wind- 
lass one pair of cords may be. let down while an- 
other is being wound up, and thus no time lost. 
In this way the tobacco is hung very nearly, if not 
actually, as fast as the plants can be handled. 
The sticks are suspended urion cleats between 
thejoists; and the windlass may be shoved about 
upon the top of the joists. Each plant is hung 
by a simple turn in the cord — as a sailor would 
say " by a half-hitch, the running part to jam." 
The plants lap more or less, according to the 
judgment of the hanger. The distance apart of 
these strings, is the least possible, so that the 
plants will touch, but not crowd each other. 
When the plants first taken in, have dried 
somewhat, they are easily moved closer to- 
gether, by simply slipping the sticks on the 
cleats. Thus fully one third of the room can be 
regained if one's tobacco does not ripen all at 
once. The cord used by Mr. Reader is 3-strand 
cotton, twisted very hard, and capable of sustain- 
ing a much greater weight than the G or 7 plants 
hung upon it. It has been in use several years. 
" Well — this all looks very well on paper," 
says some reader, " but do other people make it 
work as well as Mr. Reader ?" Yes Sir. There 
is an extensive and very fertile region across 
the Delaware, in the heart of which is the old 
Penn's Manor, where tobacco culture has re- 
ceived much attention. There, and in the conti- 
guous parts of New- Jersey, we learn, all the new 
tobacco houses are built upon this plan, and it 
is very highly approved. The unbiassed judg- 
ment of neighbors thus given in favor of any 
new project, or system of culture, or apparatus, 
seems to be conclusive evidence of excellence. 
Bird Boxes and Houses. 
Birds are a joy about any house. Blithe, 
cheerful, musical, industrious, they impart of 
their pleasant tempers to the air almost, and 
make the garden and all their haunts lively 
with happy animation. Their use to the farm- 
er and gardener has often been commented 
upon. They are indeed almost the only effect- 
ive check to the increase of many species of 
destructive insects, and must be regarded by all 
tillers of the soil as most valuable collaborators. 
Those birds, which naturally build their nests 
in holes, take up their dwelling in bird houses 
very readily, if these be 
provided. Martins, blue- 
birds, and wrens are of 
this kind, and where 
houses suited to their 
wants and tastes are 
provided, they will al- 
most always be filled. 
We give several very 
simple plans for bird 
houses. The first represents a small bluebird or 
martin house, to be set upon a post. It is about 
7 or 8 by 10 inches in outside measure, divided 
into four compartments, each about 4x6. These 
are entered from different sides of the house, and 
each well ventilated by holes bored in the sides 
near the top, or by spaces left open in the gable 
ends for the upper tenements. In larger houses, 
the entrances to boxes on the same side of the 
house should be as far apart as convenient, so 
that adjoining families shall not disagree. Mar- 
tins are very cleanly 
birds, but noisy. Blue- 
birds will not agree 
with them at all, so it 
is best to put up mar- 
tin houses after the 
bluebirds have come 
and established them- 
selves, as the martins 
arrive later. Fig. 2 is a Fi S- 3— wren box. , 
single bluebird house, very easily constructed, 
which may be nailed upon a tree or building. 
Fig. 3 is a wren house, 3i or 4 inches by 5, 
made also for nailing up. The number of these 
little busy wrens one may collect about his 
place by putting up a large number of these 
houses, is surprising. Two pairs will not use 
the same house, even if there are several holes. 
They quarrel with bluebirds and will drive 
them away, hence it is best to keep them in 
different parts of the grounds. If wrens have a 
very small house they will soon fill it with 
sticks and make a nest ; but if the house is 
large, it sometimes seems as if they did nothing 
else all summer but fill it with twigs, and tear 
them out again. So the best way is to give the 
fidgety little fellows small quarters, that they 
may devote all their spare time to the insects. 
Birds dislike fresh paint; if houses are made now 
to use this year, it is best to simply stain them. 
Fig. 2.— BLUEBIRD BOX. 
Pleuro-pneumonia, or Lung Murrain. 
The Secretary of the Mass. Board of Agri- 
culture, C. L. Flint, again sounds a note of 
warning which farmers and all who eat meat, 
should heed. This horrible malady, compared 
with which the devastations of the most terrible 
murrains sink into insignificance, exists in Mas- 
sachusetts, probably also in most or all of the 
New-England States, and very likely in New- 
York, and further west. No measures are taken 
to restrain its spread, and unprincipled men will 
sell suspected cattle to get them off their hands, 
while honest men may unwittingly sell those in- 
fected, and thus the disease will surely spread. 
The losses which may thus be inflicted on this 
country ma)', in a few years, equal all the ex- 
penses of the war. In the British Islands, the 
most moderate estimate of the loss by this dis- 
ease alone, is $10,000,000 a year. Mr. Flint says, 
that over a million head of cattle died within 
6 years ending with 1860, valued at $60,000,000. 
In addition to this immense number, a great 
many are slaughtered for beef on account of the 
disease. — The report to the House of Lords, 
represents the most reckless traffic in diseased 
meat, and says that those animals when slaugh- 
tered are commonly eaten (except the lungs) 
"even though the disease has made such pro- 
gress as to taint the carcass." "At present there 
is a keen competition among butchers for a cow 
in the last stage of pleuro-pneumonia. Dis- 
eased town dairy cows realize from £5 to £20, 
($25 to $100) each." This state of things, taken 
in connection with the fact, that live stock in- 
surance companies have nearly all failed on ac- 
count of the ravages of this disease, has so in- ■ 
creased the price of meat that the meat-con- 
suming public is annually paying $50,000,000 
more now for the same amount of meat, than it 
did the year before the importation of the dis- 
