AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
50-4 
man ; g. sire, Highland Chief; g. g. sire, Gamester; 
g. g. g. sire, Bine Ribbon; g. g. g. g. sire, Black 
Jack, etc. The value of a pedigree, depends prin¬ 
cipally upon its truthfulness, and its completeness, in 
other words, it must be the work of reliable breed¬ 
ers, and must contain no breaks or omissions. The 
pedigree being perfect, the value of the animal will 
then depend upon the character of the ancestors ; 
they should be pure in blood, and abound in the de¬ 
sired points. A pedigree should run clearly, step by 
step, back through a long line of excellent animals. 
A Home-made Churn-Power. 
“"W. R.,” a correspondent in Alabama, sends a 
drawing of a home-made churn-power, by which 
tke motion may be originated with a wheel, it 
consists of a frame, as shown in the engraving, in 
which the churn is set at one end ; an upright dash¬ 
er, attached to a horizontal pulley, is made to work 
in the churn. The dasher consists of several arms 
attached to the upright rod; the lower end fits in 
a piece of wood, which is placed at the bottom of 
the churn, and is thus held while it is turned around 
with great rapidity by means of a cord passing 
around the horizontal pulley of the dasher and the 
upright pulley to which the crank is attached. The 
pulley over the churn is held in place by a cross 
cleat, which is fastened by a button or a bolt to the 
side of the frame, and thus prevents the dasher 
from being thrown out of place as it is rotated. 
The legs of the frame stand bracing each other 
that it may be as stable as possible. The accom¬ 
panying engraving gives the side view of the churn 
power, with a section of the churn and the dashers. 
The Automatic Key Wrench. 
Our advertising columns have so long presented 
the “key that will wind any watch,” that they 
must be familiar with the appearance of this handy 
watch key, if they have not made a closer acquaint¬ 
ance from actual use. The same ingenious device 
that makes the key different from all others, has 
been applied in a small wrench, which is essen¬ 
tially Mr. Birch’s watch key, magnified to a size 
sufficient to enable its jaws to clasp any nut up to 
about three-fourths of an inch square. The adjust¬ 
ment is, as in the watch key, made by pressing 
upon the end opposite to the jaws, and the ease 
and rapidity with which it can be made to fit any 
nut within its scope, must commend it to mechan¬ 
ics in general, and make it a most useful addition 
to the tool-chest of the farmer and the amateur 
mechanic. The engraving shows the form of the 
wrench, the real length of which is four inches. It 
BIRCH’S KEY WRENCH. 
differs from the watch key only in size, and in the 
addition of a cross-piece to serve as a lever, when 
considerable power is required to turn the nut. 
Still Another Mole-trap.— A correspondent 
sends his plan of catching moles and mice, by sink¬ 
ing a narrow-mouthed jar in the runs, so that the 
animals fall into it; the form of the jar is such that 
they cannot escape. 
As mice, doubtless, 
commit much of the 
depredation charged 
to moles, and ap¬ 
propriate their bur¬ 
rows for their own 
purposes, this trap 
will serve the pur¬ 
pose of catching 
them as well as the 
moles. A flower-pot 
or straight-sided jar 
may not retain mice 
that have been cap- A JAK mole-trap. 
tured, but this form of jar will keep what it gets. 
Cisterns: How To Measure Them. 
Inquiries are frequently made, as to a method of 
measuring the contents of cisterns ; and to answer 
them, in a general way, we give the accompanying 
engraving of a section of a cistern. This one consists 
of a cylinder 12 feet in diameter, and 10 feet high, 
with an inverted cone 6 feet deep, for the bottom. 
The cubical contents of the upper, or cylindrical 
portion, is found by multiplying the area of the 
top, or the square feet the top contains, by the 
hight of the cylinder.—A general rule fov getting 
the area of a circle is to square the diameter (that is, 
multiply it by itself,) and multiply the product by 
the decimal .7854.* The diameter of this cistern is 
12 feet; therefore 12 times 12 equals 144, and this 
multiplied by .7854 equals 113.0976, or about 113*/io 
feet for the surface measurement, or the number of 
feet of boards it would take to just cover the cis¬ 
tern. This 113‘/io feet multiplied by 10 feet in depth 
gives 1,131 cubic feet as the contents of the cylin¬ 
der portion.—To find the contents of a cone : Mul¬ 
tiply the area of its base by one-third of its hight. The 
bottom of this cistern is an inverted cone. Its base 
area is the same as the cylinder above, viz., 113v, 0 
feet. Multiplying this by 2 (one-third of the hight 
of the cone) gives 226'V, 0 for the contents of 
the cone, or bottom part. This, added to the 
cylinder contents above (1,131 feet), or 1,131 + 
226 2 /io, gives 1,357-/ 10 cubic feet as the solid contents 
of the whole cistern. If there were another cone at 
the top of the cistern, its contents should be cal¬ 
culated in the same manner, and added to the 
parts already determined.—The ordinary gallon 
contains 231 inches: 
one cubic foot (1,728 
solid inches), therefore, 
contains 7.48, or very 
nearly 71 gallons. A 
barrel of 311 gallons 
contains about 4.27, or 
a trifle over 41 cubic 
feet. The above cis¬ 
tern, containing 1,357 
cubic feet, would there¬ 
fore hold about 318 
barrels of water, if en 
tirely full. Each foot 
in depth of the perpendicular portion of the cistern 
in question would hold 261 barrels (113.1+-4.27). 
* Rules for Measuremnt. —To find the Circumference 
of a Circle or Ring: For ordinary calculation, we call 
the circumference or distance around, three times the di¬ 
ameter or greatest distance across. It is really three and 
one-seventh, or to be still more accurate, multiply the 
diameter by 3.1416— cutting off four figures from the right 
of the product as decimals. A ring or circle 7 foot across 
would be7x3'/ T , or 22 feet in circumference; or, to be 
extremely accurate, 7x3.1416 gives 21 and 99-lOOths feet. 
To find the Area of the Surface of a Circle; Multiplythe 
square of the diameter by .7854, cutting off four right 
hand figures. Thus, for a circle or ring 7 feet across we 
have 7 limes 7 equals 49. This multiplied by .7854, or 49 
X\7854, gives 38.4S46, or just about 38*4 feet.—Another 
rule is to multiply half the diameter by half the cir¬ 
cumference. For a 7-feet circle, 7 times 3.1416 equals 
21.9912. Half of this is 10.9956. Multiply this by 3>£, or 
half of the diameter, 7 feet, (that is 10.9956 by 3J4) equals 
38.4846, or 38% feet, the same as by the rule above. 
12Ft. 
THE CISTERN. 
A Useful Slitting Gauge. 
Those who work at carpentry, frequently use an 
ordinary carpenter’s gauge, intended for marking, 
for slitting up straight grained, thin stuff. A cor¬ 
respondent “ W. W.,” Cheap Hill, Teun., finds a 
tool made for the purpose greatly preferable, and 
sends a sketch showing how he makes it. He uses 
an old plane stock, to which the knife a, is fastened 
upon the side b. The handle of the plane, c, is left 
in its original place. A gauge strip, the end of 
which is shown at d, is attached to the bottom of 
the plane ; this strip is attached by three small 
screws, and may be moved to and from the knife, 
as it is desired to cut a narrower or wider strip. 
The knife, a, is made from an old saw plate, and 
ground down at the edges, and should project below 
the plane-stock, for a greater or less distance, ac¬ 
cording to the work to be done. To slit stuff from 
one-half, to an inch thick, the knife should project 
half an inch below the plane. Mr. W. finds this 
*tool very useful, in the absence of a mill where 
such work is done, to slit up lumber for lattice 
HOME-MADE SLITTING GAUGE. 
work, and such uses. If the strip does not come 
off at once, a tap with a mallet will cause it to do so. 
A Garden Gate. 
A correspondent, “ A. E. M.,” at Rock Cliff, Col¬ 
orado, sends us a very neat sketch of a garden gate 
he saw in Cana¬ 
da. He thinks 
that such a gate 
would be useful 
to many who live 
where snows are 
deep, and where 
there are people 
who cannot shut 
agate after them. 
The peculiarity 
of the gate is 
in being suspend¬ 
ed by a chain, 
from the frame 
above, and iu the 
pintle of the 
hinge, which is made in the form of a staple, and a 
foot or more long. It will be seen that if pushed 
either way, the gate will rise and swing in the 
arc of a circle, and be lifted above the snow, 
when let go, it will at one* drop back to its place. 
A HANDY GARDEN GATE. 
Cure for a Self-sucking Cow. —“A Sub¬ 
scriber ” sends a method of preventing a cow from 
sucking herself; 
this is simply to 
fasten to the 
horns a long- 
sharp - pointed 
stick by means 
of strong pieces 
of twiue, as 
shown in the 
engraving here 
given The 
pointed stick 
should extend 
about a foot 
outside of the 
horns. This simple contrivance prevents the cow 
from reaching the teat when disposed to suck her¬ 
self. The stick should be removed so soon as it is 
evident that the cow has lost the inclination to 
suck herself, which will be after a short time. 
STICK FOR SUCKING COW. 
