124 
MAKING DRAINS.-SLAUGHTERING SHEEP FOR PELTS AND TALLOW. 
America will not fail to follow so laudable an ex¬ 
ample, and there will shortly be as great a strife for 
electricity as there is now for guano. Deeds of pro¬ 
perty will include the right to collect it, and law¬ 
suits will contest the right of taking it from rivers 
and lakes. Lecturers will not get enough to show 
their classes without paying heavily for it. We 
shall have no more thunder-storms, as the electricity 
will all be converted into food before enough can get 
together to make a flash of lightning; even a black 
cat’s back will cease to give forth sparks when 
stroked the wrong way, in the dark ! (c) 
I fear that this new doctrine will not find much 
favor in New England, and that the farmers in my 
own State, the Land of Steady Habits, will look 
especially shy at it. Perhaps, after all, it is as well 
to wait for more light. I might recommend to them 
the enclosure of small experimental plots in their 
gardens, were I not morally certain that on the very 
next washing day, their wives and daughters would 
seize upon the posts for the extension of their clothes 
lines, and so defeat the efforts of science. 
It was at first expected that manure would be of 
no further use, but it is now said that its action will 
be much more powerful with the help of this new 
ally. That I may not seem to speak in too trifling a 
manner on this subject, I must add that there is no 
doubt whatever that these gentlemen are right in as¬ 
suming the existence of electrical currents. That 
they do exist, is beautifully proven by the system of 
telegraphic communication established in late years, 
transmitting intelligence with the rapidity of thought 
by the employment of this invisible agent. 
An ingenious clock-maker in this city has applied 
it to clocks. He has two wires, one going directly 
into the earth, and the other communicating with the 
gas pipe, which also enters the earth sooner or later, 
in its course, thus completing a galvanic circuit. The 
points of the wires are brought upon opposite sides 
of the pendulum, and being positively and negatively 
electrified, the alternate attraction and repulsion im¬ 
part the requisite motion to the pendulum. This 
fact alone demonstrates the existence of quite power¬ 
ful currents of the electric fluid. Whether it may 
be profitably employed in practical agriculture is ano¬ 
ther question, upon which, though holding ourselves 
open to conviction in future, we may well be excused 
for entertaining some doubts at present, (d) 
John P. Norton. 
Edinburgh, Feb. 1 , 1845. 
(a) The hated, detested things, which we will do 
our best to have abolished within twenty years. 
( b ) We are glad to have this information so soon 
at hand, to corroborate what we told our readers in 
the February Number of the Agriculturist. It will be 
seen from the date of his letter, that Mr. Norton 
could not have known that we had just written upon 
this subject. 
(c) Our correspondent is somewhat facetious upon 
the subject of electricity applied to growing vegeta¬ 
tion—half doubting, and rather more than half be¬ 
lieving, we fancy. To give our readers, therefore, 
an idea of the immense quantity of lightning in the 
clouds, and to convince them that the subject is not 
a chimerical one, we will give an ingenious calcula¬ 
tion made by M. Arago, of the quantity of lightning 
drawn from the clouds by means of paratonnerres. 
He states, that in an ordinary storm, a hundred sparks 
would be transmitted through a small breach of con¬ 
tinuity in the conductor, of which the combined 
effect would be sufficient to kill a man, and these 
would pass in ten seconds. As much lightning 
would therefore pass per minute as would destroy six 
men, and as much per hour as would kill 360 men. 
He calculates, in this way, that the paratonnerres 
erected by Beccaria, on the palace of Valentino, com¬ 
bined with the effect of the pointed parts of the roof, 
must take as much lightning per hour from the clouds 
as would be sufficient to destroy 3,000 men. 
(d) Public attention was called to the effect of 
atmospheric electricity on vegetation as early as 1819, 
by Decandolle and Sprengel, in their work on the 
Elements of the Philosophy of Plants, and has been 
more or less experimented on ever since oy the phi¬ 
losophers of Europe. We gave this letter of Mr. 
Norton’s to Wm. A. Seeley, Esq., to be read before 
the last meeting of the Agricultural Association in 
this city. To this he added an elegant and learned 
discourse on electricity, which will hereafter appear 
in the Society’s Transactions. Several gentlemen in 
this vicinity have already planted and hung their wires, 
with a view of making a series of experiments on 
this highly interesting subject the present year. 
MAKING DRAINS. 
The plan here is to cut with the common spade, a 
ditch 24 inches wide and 14 to 18 inches deep, nearly 
straight at the sides; then with a small spade, 6 
inches wide, a vault is cut one spit deep in the centre 
of the bottom. If the clay is tough, small sassafras 
or mulberry saplings, about six or eight inches in dia¬ 
meter, are procured and quartered, after being cut or 
sawed in pieces 20 inches long; three of these are 
laid across the vault, at the two ends and middle of 
each plank or puncheon, of pine or oak ; the plank is 
then laid length-wise on these; pine tops or tufts of 
grass are laid along the edges, to keep out the dirt 
that might fall through the open spaces; after this the 
dirt is pulled in with hoes, &c. The underdrains thus 
made appear to do well so far. If there is sand or 
pipeclay, plank one inch thick and six inches wide, 
are set on edge at each side of the vaults to keep 
them from caving in. T. Clagwell. 
Snow CreeJc , N. C. 
SLAUGHTERING SHEEP FOR PELTS AND 
TALLOW. 
I observed in a recent number of a newspaper, 
published in the State of Ohio, that 30,000 sheep’s 
pelts had been shipped from the port of Cleaveland 
(1 think it was) during the past season. Is this an 
indication of right practice on the part of Ohio farm¬ 
ers, or rather does it not sho\y a very bad state of 
things? If, as is confidently asserted, England alone 
purchases from her colonies and from other countries 
50,000,000 pounds of wool every year, to supply 
her woollen manufactories, and the demand there is 
constantly increasing; and if we, at present, raise 
only five-eighths of the quantity required for our own 
consumption, which is yearly increasing also, surely 
this is no time, nor is ours a country in which to 
slaughter sheep for their pelts and tallow. Even 
supposing they were coarse, long-wooled sheep, it 
would have been far better to have purchased good 
