56 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
“On that point,’’ said I, “much depends on cir¬ 
cumstances. If I got seed from a distance ; if the 
land was rich, warm, and mellow, and everything 
favorable, and if we planted early, I would prefer 
email or medium sized potatoes, rather than large— 
not that I should expect a larger crop, but because 
the small seed would plant twice as much land, and 
thus reduce the cost of seed one-half. But if the 
land was in poor condition, and we were obliged 
to plant late, I should prefer the larger seed.” 
Making 1 Wheels by Machinery. 
Fig. 1.— HUB-BORING AUGER. 
The lightness, elegance, and surprising strength 
of American carriage wheels are well known, not 
only everywhere in 
this country, but are 
considered remarka¬ 
ble in Europe. Amer¬ 
ican carriages are be¬ 
coming fashionable 
in England, now that 
their lightness has 
been found consistent 
with actually greater 
strength than is pos¬ 
sessed by the heavy, 
lumbering English 
vehicles. Our car¬ 
riages, wagons, and 
wheeled vehicles generally, owe much of their 
beauty and usefulness to the excellent structure of 
the wheels, and this is principally due to the ex¬ 
cellence of the machinery by which all the parts of 
the wheels are made and fitted together. Former¬ 
ly it was a long and tedious labor to make a wheel, 
and when it was made, the joints were ill-fitted 
and soon worked loose. When a wheel gives out, 
the carriage is useless, and it is therefore of the 
greatest importance that the wheels of all our 
vehicles, subjected to very hard usage upon our 
•generally miserable roads, should be made in the 
best mauner and fitted with exactness. It is only 
by the use of machinery that joints can be made to 
■fit perfectly close, an l that every mortise and tenon 
of this kind in a wheel should be precisely alike. 
Since machinery has come into gen ral use, and 
there have been such extensive wagon and carriage 
manufactories as those of the Milburn and the South 
Bend works in operation, farm and road wagons 
and carriages of all sorts have been greatly cheap¬ 
ened and improved. The work about a wagon or 
carriage requiring the greatest skill, is in the 
wheels. If the joints are not well made, the 
wheels soon begin to work, and open, water pene¬ 
trates, the wood swells and shrinks alternately, 
and thev very soon become an utter wreck. No 
more severe test of the perfection of a wheel can 
be exacted than that of the arid plains of the West; 
and machine made wheels have stood this test 
without failure. The machinery used in making 
wheels is very varied. The hubs are turned in 
lathes and mortised by mortising machines; the 
felloes are sawed by band-saws, which cut several 
pieces at one operation, and the spokes are turned 
in a lathe and tenoned by a tenoning machine. All 
this is simple work, however, and could be done 
very well by an expert mechanic by hand. But to 
bore out the hub perfectly true, with a tapering 
hole if required, and at right angles with the plane 
of the wheel, is hardly possible to be done by hand 
in every case, even by the most skillful workman. 
This, however, is done by the auger shown at figure 
1, which is held at right angles to the rim of the 
wheel by the clamps shown at figure 2. This en¬ 
sures the proper boring of the hub and the true 
running of the wheel upon the axle. The tenons 
of the spokes are cut with the hollow auger shown 
at figure 3. This is mounted upon a frame, upon 
which the hub is also mounted, as showu at figure 
4, and thus every tenon is made to bear an exact 
and proper relation to the hub and the axle and 
with each other. The felloes are bored in the man¬ 
ner shown at figure 5, and each hole being of pre¬ 
cisely the same size and in the same direction, is 
made to fit any one of the tenons of the spokes. 
This ensures the easy but perfectly accurate fitting 
of these parts, and the consequent strength and 
durability of the wheel, although it may be of such 
exceeding lightness as is seen iu one of the road 
wagons to which the fastest roadsters are hitched. 
The machinery here illustrated is made by the 
Silver & Deming Manufacturing Co., Salem, Ohio. 
- M -- 
Comparative Value of Pedigree and Non- 
Recorded Jerseys. 
BT THOMAS FITCH, NEW LONDON, CONN. 
The Boston “ Evening Traveler,” of Oct. 19th, 
gave a full report of the sale of the herd of the late 
Alvin Adams, of Watertown, Mass., with the pedi¬ 
gree, name, and number of registry in the American 
Jersey Cattle Club Register, of 38 cows recorded in 
the book, with the names of the purchaser and 
residence ; and also of 5 cows without pedigrees, 
with names of cows and purchaser, and the price 
each cow sold for, I find by this report that the five 
cows without pedigrees, or record, sold for a higher 
average price by about $10 each, than those regis¬ 
tered with authentic pedigrees. This report says, 
also, there were present about 800 of the Jersey 
stoekraisers of the United States, etc., and that 
this herd was considered the finest in the country. 
[February, 
Admitting these facts, how happens it that the 
five cows, without record or pedigree, sold for a 
higher price than the Herd Register cows, except 
for the real reason, that they were the best cows, 
as they were, in all that makes value in a Jersey 
cow, viz., in form, size, udders, teats, colors, beauty, 
and all the qualities making value. I have con¬ 
versed with several breeders, members of this Club, 
that were present at this sale, and they, without 
exception, all admit this. 
The American Jersey Cattle Club, when it formed 
their Register, claimed that its object was to pre¬ 
vent imposition upon purchasers of Jerseys, by 
separating the pure from the mixed stock, or grades, 
that were sold for thoroughbreds. It was to be a 
purely philanthropic institution to prevent fraud. 
After years of labor, and sacrifice, and the collect¬ 
ing of thousands of dollars from the public, in the 
shape of entry fees to non-members of this Club, of 
Fig. 5.— BORING RIMS. 
$3 on each animal registered, and the boast in one 
of the Club’s reports, that an additional value of 
more than 50 p. c. had been given to every Jersey en¬ 
tered in this Register, in almost the suburbs of 
Boston, on the very spot where the Club originated, 
with this great company of experts, breeders, and 
judges, the cows without pedigrees, or record, out- 
sell those with pedigrees and record in this book. 
[The writer of the above has perhaps singled out 
an exceptional case whereon to found a general 
rule. Any person who expects that pedigree alone 
will confer excellence, will probably be disappoint¬ 
ed ; but we imagine that Mr. Fitch himself places 
some reliance on the pedigree, or descent of his 
own stock, even of those not recorded in the 
A. J. C. C. Herd Register.—En.] 
—-■ m m -- 
Rustic Poultry Houses. 
The most profitable poultry in the world are those 
of the Irish and French people. More eggs are ex¬ 
ported from France and Ireland than from any 
other countries. The fowls of those countries are 
in greater part lodged in the most primitive sort of 
shelters, there being few, or none, of the costly 
buildings which in this country are generally sup¬ 
posed to be needed for profitable poultry keeping. 
The usual French fowl house is a little cabin of 
boards or bark, with a thatched roof, aud a yard 
fenced in with small poles or brush. Generally 
Fig. 1.— PLAN OF CWICKEN YARD. 
there is a fruit tree of some kind, or more than one, 
in the yard. Th!i Irish fowls are kept either in 
shelters made wholly of sods, built against the back 
part of the house, and warmed by the heat of the 
chimney, or the birds are accommodated with 
roosting places, along with the cow, in a part of the 
house itself. The hens are kept dry and warm, 
and this is the secret of their proliticnoss in eggs. 
