150 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
Jiolds to the stomach and a small mouth through which he 
sucks the liquid contents of the stomach ! He is a sucker 
and nothing more. 
Then, to my first assertion — as woi-ms are in all animals 
and as each possesses affinity for its particular class of 
animals, so have the holts a natural home in the stomach 
of all animals of the horse genus. It appears to bean 
order of nature that no animal, commencing with the 
highest — man — to the lowest, but has incorporated in the 
system some kind of V)orm. 
Second. If the botts or Grnbs do not live by suction 
alone, why do they remain so long in the stomach of a 
horse without eating their way out, when it certainly be- 
comes empty very often 1 
Third. All the cases of death produced by botts that 
have come under my knowledge, resulted from want of 
regular attention and under long fasting. 
Fourth. Some one asks, “if the boots, by eating up the 
stomach do not kill the horse, what does %” We will 
tell you. The presence of the botts collected in the car- 
diac opening, or that part of the stomach at which the 
food enters in large quantities in consequence of the en- 
tire emptiness of the organ of all the food and juices they 
have been accustomed to feed upon, acts upon the gang- 
lion or collection of nerves, at that point, which are wisely 
provided by Providence to cause the proper fiow of gas- 
ti’ic juice for digestion, and thus irritating those nerves, 
which ramify the whole stomach, causes an unusual flow 
of gastric juice into that organ, there to lie until the time 
comes for its action upon any substance, not containing 
life, (for it is a well known fact to Physiologists that the 
gastric juice will not act upon a living substance.) We 
then have the stomach empty of food, the botts packed in 
its cardiac opening, and the large supply of gastric juice 
lying inert in that organ. The horse cannot swallow his 
food. We dose him and back it comes through mouth 
and nose. He rolls in great agony, unless relieved by 
what'? Any sweet mixture you may give. Sage tea and 
sugar or molasses, or milk and molasses, or Jerusalem oak 
tea and molasses ! Why use a sweet liquid to cause the 
botts to retreat '? Because, like many other animals and 
insects, “sweetning” will make a ruthless lot of botts be- 
have themselves. 
If these remedies fail and the horse dies — what kills 
him % The botts, say you reader. It is verily so, my 
friend. The botts kill him; but they don’t eat through 
his stomach ! Not a bit of it ! Now comes into play 
that gastric juice we left lying so completely inert awhile 
ago. True to natural laws — its natural laws in particular 
the suspended work goes on, and every part of the 
stomach it comes in contact with as a now' dead sub- 
stance is at once acted upon and digested! Hence the 
honey-comb work ! Hence the old theory of so many, that 
the botts ate the maw “through and through” and thus 
produced death, 
I shall ever believe my theory the most reasonable one 
when viewed in the right light ; and the proper remedy 
which should be resorted to at once, is blood-letting, and a 
drench of sage tea and molasses, a quart at least given 
gradually, or milk and molasses, or Mr. Trotter’s remedy, 
followed in from one to two hours with a large dose of 
castor oil. If delayed until inflammation is set up in the 
stomach, the case becomes more complicated and less 
easy of treatment — promptness is the word, F. J. R. 
March, 1857. 
A Great Wool Grower. — The Manchester Mirror, 
says that Mr. Abraham Melvin, of Weare,N. H., recent- 
ly sold 25,000 pounds of Spanish Merino wool to parties 
in Boston for fiO cents a pound, amounting to ^15,000. 
The wool wms his own raising, and part of a three years’ 
stock. 
SEEDLING POTATOES SPONTANEOUSEV PRO- 
diiced. 
Mr. Editor — It has long been a question of interest in 
my inquiries — are new varieties of the potato ever produced 
spontaneously from seed-balls falling upon the ground in. 
the autumn and germinating the next spring '? 
The analogical fact that seeds of many tropical plants, 
such as those of the cucumber, melon and pumpkin— but 
especially of the summer squash and tomato, do frequent- 
ly thus survive the winter, strongly suggested that spch 
might be the fact with the potato. The uncertainty of many 
new potatoes, suddenly coming to light in some neighbor- 
hood, also led in the same direction. Happily this ques- 
tion is now settled, in a positive and most interesting man- 
ner. 
In 1855, 1 cultivated, in one corner of my garden, nine- 
teen hills of a seedling potato, derived, in 1853, from the 
Early Mountain June, and which I have named the Early 
Mountain June Pink Eye, I had another plat of the same 
variety, of twenty-four hills. This variety is very pro- 
lific in seed balls, averaging that year about seventy balls - 
to the hill. Just after my fall digging, I gathered per- 
haps one-quarter of these balls, and left the remainder to- 
rot upon the ground. My garden was plowed the next 
spring, May 6th, and the other plat still earlier, the occu- 
pant sowing it with barley. The plowing, in both cases, 
was earlier than the time when the potato seed finds hear 
enough to sprout. The plat in my garden was planted 
partly with sweet corn. May 20, and partly with citron 
melons, June I2th. When hoeing the corn, June 12th,. 
and preparing the hills of my melons, which were to be 
transferred from my hot-bed, the soil was found pretty 
thickly covered with young potato plants, from one inch 
to an inch anda half high. A. small portion of them, only 
(41 hills) were spared, standing at a distance of three or 
four feet apart. Subsequently, (July 2d) all those grow- 
ing in the sweet corn were removed with the transplanter 
to another place, it being apparent that the shade of the 
corn would ruin them. Those in the melons were left to- 
grow there permanently. After the discovery of those in 
my garden, I visited the site of the other plat, and found 
them springing up thickly with the barley. These last,, 
being in light soil, were all burned up during the heat of 
the last summer, having to contend, moreover, with the 
barley around them. Those in my garden were treated 
as potatoes usually are, viz . hoed twice or three times. 
In the fall digging, I selected 12 varieties from these 41 
sorts, which seemed sufficiently promising to justify fur- 
ther trial. The most of them contained tubers of eatable 
size. 
As this ground was plowed very deep, the most ofthe po- 
tato seed was obviously turned under too deep ever to grow 
and find its way out. I shall look, theretbie, with inter- 
est, after my next spring’s plowing to see whether any of 
the buried seed has retained its vitality sufficiemly to grow 
the second year. During the progressive culture of the 
melons and sweet corn, new seedling potatoes kept com- 
ing up, some of them as late as September. 
If now we suppose that another person had occupied 
this garden, ignorant of what I had cultivated upon u in 
1855, he might have taken these young potato plants for 
tomatoes, permitting them to grow where tliey came up, 
or transplanting a portion as I did. Tlie consequence 
would have been just the same, that is, new varieties of 
seedling potatoes spontaneously originated, though aided 
by culture. 
Altogether this experiment, though involving little wis- 
dom or labor, is full of interest in the histmy ot potato 
culture. C. E Goourich, 
[in Jour, of S. Y. Stale Sociely. 
Utica, February, 1857. 
