1880.] 
59 
AMERICAN AGKRIGTJLTURIST 
The Villager’s Pig—How To Keep It 
A large number of our village subscribers keep a 
cow, and one or more pigs, just to save the waste 
from the table, and to help in the support of the 
family. Both are important sources of income 
when properly man¬ 
aged. The inevitable 
waste from the kitchen 
in an ordinary Ameri¬ 
can family amounts to 
a good deal in the 
course of a year. It 
may as well be turned 
into pork, sausages, 
head-cheese, spare ribs, 
and lard, as to be 
thrown away. A neigh¬ 
bor, who has a vegeta¬ 
ble garden, and studies 
thrift, has just slaugh¬ 
tered two pigs, weigh¬ 
ing 598 lbs , and worth 
$35.88 at the market 
price. The manure 
made from them is 
worth ten dollars at 
least. Two small pigs 
were put into the pen 
April 6th, and came out well fattened November 
21st, about seven months and a half. The food 
consumed consisted mainly of sour, and butter¬ 
milk, kitchen waste, small potatoes, cabbage, 
turnips, sweet com, wind-fall apples, and other 
wastes from the garden. To this was added enough 
Indian meal to keep them constantly full fed from 
spring to fall. A good pen is an important item in 
feeding pigs. The sleeping apartment should be 
dry, and be kept well littered with straw, leaves, or 
sea-weed. From one-half to two-thirds of a pig’s 
life is to be spent in 6leep, if it is well treated. 
Give the pig the materials, and he will make a nice 
bed and keep it clean. The remainder of the stye 
is of less importance. There should be room 
enough to compost the manure, liquid and solid, 
with garden soil, corn 6talks, weeds, and other 
refuse matter. The pig is unrivalled as a manu¬ 
facturer of compost. Its good effects will be seen 
in all parts of the garden, where it is spread the 
following season. Regularity of feeding, three 
Pig. 3.— STEAM DRILL AT WORK. 
times a day, is one of the secrets of success. This 
may be at your own meal times, if your wife is a 
good house-keeper and keeps a clock in the kitchen. 
Good digestion depends upon regular meal hours 
for man and beast. There is then very little 
temptation to over eating, no cloying, and no 
spells of refusing food. A pig should never lose a 
meal after he is put into the pen, and should never 
be hungry enough to squeal. It requires some 
judgment in equalizing the rations, as well as in 
regulating their time. Much less of Indian meal is 
required for a ration, than of cooked potatoes, and 
less of potatoes than of kitchen waste. If anything 
is left in the feed trough, the ration has been a 
little too large, or not quite good enough. A pig 
should have all he can eat up and digest A 
variety of food should also receive attention. The 
raw vegetables and fruits from the garden are ex¬ 
cellent appetizers, and enables the pig to consume 
more meal. The meal may be mixed with cold or 
boiling water, with milk, or boiled fruits and veg¬ 
etables, as suits convenience. It may be varied 
with unground corn, buckwheat, or a mixture of 
ground grains. The time spent in caring for a pig 
usually comes at meal hours, and may be balanced 
by what we learn in the school of economy. There 
is perhaps no animal that will exhibit more satis- I 
faction, and give greater returns for good care and j 
feeding, than a pig; and on the other hand a 
hungry one without a warm home—one that has ! 
not had a proper bringing up—can make itself ex- ; 
ceedingly disagreeable, both as to general appear¬ 
ance and the noise that it will produce; besides, 
such an animal is without profit. As a rule, it 
pays the villager to raise his own pork, and it 
pays him the greatest profit when he takes the 
best care of his pig. C. 
Mines and Mining Terms, 
It will be remembered that in the January num¬ 
ber the various mining terms, bed, vein,fioat, winze, 
etc., were explained, and we closed with the 
miners at work. Sometimes there is found in 
a vein where it is greatly enlarged, a large mass 
of barren rock containing no valuable mineral and 
of a kind different from 
that of the vein; this 
is known as a horse, 
shown in figure 1, where 
the vein matter is seen 
at each side of the en¬ 
closed mass or “horse.” 
To meet with a horse in 
a large vein is a great 
disappointment, and it 
often occasions an 
enormons increase in 
the cost of working the 
vein. In large mines a 
“ cage ” is nsed, which 
is precisely similar in 
its construction and 
working to the elevators used in large buildings in 
the cities; one of these is shown at figure 2, in the 
shaft, and a truck loaded with one from a level is 
being pushed by a miner to the cage to be taken 
up. Levels are often driven in two parts, so that 
more men may be employed and the work hastened. 
The manner of doing this is shown at figure 3, 
where a steam drill is seen at work in the upper 
part of the level. One of these steam drills is 
shown in detail in figure 4 ; a drill of this kind will 
do the work of a hundred men with hammers, and 
is able to make 1,030 or even 2,000 strokes in a 
minute. The diamond drill does not strike the 
rock, but turns round very rapidly, and consists of 
a hollow bar of steel like a tube, with black dia¬ 
monds set in the edge. As this is turned it cuts a 
channel like an O in the rock, leaving a “ core,” 
which is broken off, and gives a sample of the kind 
of rock being bored. This kind of drill's used for 
exploring, and holes are often made and “cores” 
taken out for as much as 70 or more feet ahead of 
the open working, thus showing for that distance 
the exact character of the work to be done and the 
character of the ore to be taken out. In exploring 
the body of a horse, a drill of this kind may save 
much time and great expense, avoiding much un¬ 
profitable work. When the ore is raised to the 
surface it is crashed in a stamp mill. A 10-stamp 
mill is shown at figure 5. This consists of heavy 
masses of chilled east iron, at the ends of long rods. 
The rods are set in a frame, and have catches upon 
them. A shaft, turned by the pulley, has cams 
upon it, which engage with the catches on the roda, 
These cams lift the rods and stamp heads, and then 
release them, when the stamps fall with great force 
upon chilled iron blocks under them, in a trough 
Fig. 4.— STEAM DBILL—ENLARGED VIEW. 
or box, crushing the ore that is thrown into the 
trough, into fine powder. The crushed ore, if sil¬ 
ver, is taken to the smelting furnace, but if gold, is 
amalgamated with mercury, and is thus separated 
from the rock or any base metal which may ba 
mixed with it. The gold is freed from the mercury 
and melted into bars, and the silver is cast into 
blocks called “bricks,” fig. 6, of which great piles 
have been 6een heaped up on the pavements in front 
of express offices in the mining towns. The gold and 
silver thus obtained is partly sent to the mints to 
be coined into money, and more or less is worked 
up into jewelry, and ornaments of various kinds, 
of watches, chains, spoons, forks, plate, and numer¬ 
ous other articles of use ; some gold and silver are 
used in photography, and some in medicine; in 
fact, the uses of these “ precious ” metals, so-called 
because they do not rust or waste by oxidation, are 
much more numerous than is generally supposed. 
Spreading Manure from tlie Cart Tail. — 
It is pretty well settled, that barn-yard manure, or 
the compost 
heap, can be 
spread at any 
season of the 
year, without 
much waste 
from evapora¬ 
tion. There is, 
Fig 0.—“ bars ” and “ bricks.” however, a 
great chance for waste of labor, in the final dis¬ 
position of the manure, whether we handle it 
once, twice, or thrice. The old style of farmer was 
wont to cart out part of his manure in the fall, to 
put it in large heaps upon the ground that was to be 
Fig. 1.— a “ HORSE.” 
Fig. 2.— view of shaft, with truck and elevator. 
