140 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[April, 
1860 to 1877, inclusive, the increase was at the rate 
of 246 per cent, while in the preceding twenty- 
four years, the increase was about 40 per cent. 
“Since 1809 our improvement in the sheep that 
produce clothing (fine) wool has been very great. 
Then per cent of unwashed wool to the live 
weight of the animal was the standard ; in 1864 
the best recorded yield was 21 per cent, and the 
heaviest fleece 27 pounds. Three rams bred since 
1873 in Vermont have yielded fleeces averaging 
27.3 per cent of unwashed wool, while the average 
weight of the fleeces of the rams was 34'/s pounds. 
“ Wool yielded by cross-bred Merino and mutton 
sheep is held by the manufacturer to be of great 
value, producing a combing wool that gives soft¬ 
ness and cloth-like character to our fabrics not 
found in those abroad, as admitted by the best 
London and Paris tailors. We are now raising 
good mutton and supplying a rapidly increasing 
market. In 1839, on the great market day before 
Christmas, 400 sheep fully stocked the market at 
Brighton, near Boston, Mass. Last year 272,000 
sheep and lambs were slaughtered at the Brighton 
Abattoir, 20,000 of them coming from Kentucky. 
“Capital employed by manufacturers is nearly 
$300,000,000 giving work to nearly 200,000 persons. 
“ The importation of wool in the form of manu¬ 
factured goods is rapidly falling off. In 1860 our 
importation amounted to $37,973,190. In 1878, 
our population having increased not less than 
12,000,000, we imported only $25,230,154. In cer¬ 
tain classes this falling off of importations is very 
marked. In carpets the importation in 1878 was 
not one-fourteenth the value of the importations 
of 1872. Dress goods, in which the foreigners still 
lead our manufacturers in the estimation of certain 
wealthy consumers, are no longer imported as ex¬ 
tensively as formerly, their value having fallen 
in 1878 to $12,000,000 from $20,090,000 in 1872. 
“ The wonderful progress made, to the great 
benefit of the whole Nation, is before us, and our 
flock owners having surmounted the difficulties of 
changing the flocks of the East into producers of 
long wool and mutton, and transferring the pro¬ 
duction of fine wool to the West and Southwest, 
we look forward to profitable production of wool, 
combined with mutton, in New-England, as has 
long been the case in Old England, and abundant re¬ 
wards to the owners of flocks of fine-wooled sheep in 
their new homes. In view of the foregoing facts, 
may not the wool-growers and the wool-manufac¬ 
turers justly claim that they have largely contribut¬ 
ed to the balance of trade in our favor, and to the 
ability of the Nation to resume specie payment ?” 
The above facts and figures are worthy of study. 
Among the Farmers—No. 51. 
BY ONE OP THEM. 
- ** - 
Sam Stone’s Horse-Shoe. 
There is one brawny wielder of the hammer and 
draw-knife who studies his trade and loves it, tem¬ 
pering horse-shoeing with humanity. I will tell 
about him by and by—but first, do all my readers 
know what a delicate and beautiful box a horse’s 
hoof is ? The box, figure 1, is in external form a 
segment of the base of a cone, tough and elastic. 
The sole of the foot is attached to it in such 
a way that it has a free up and down play with 
every step—bringing the frog down to a bearing 
upon the ground. This substance, which is called 
a frog, and indeed the sole and frog together, are 
not intended to sustain the whole weight of the 
horse, as is evident from the fact that every horse 
winces when forced to tread with his whole weight 
upon them, as when he steps upon or picks up a 
stone. Figure 2 shows a longitudinal cross-section 
of a horse’s foot, and the relative position of the 
frog, sole, laminae and shell. His weight is chief¬ 
ly borne by the homy shell—and one who has 
not studied the horse’s hoof will be surprised to 
find that the weight of the horse is really suspended 
from the inner walls of the hoof by delicate cur¬ 
tains, or leaves of horn, called the lamince. They 
form the entire inner surface of the hoof walls, and 
are enclosed, each one by itself, in avascular mem¬ 
brane, and so closely connected with the half moon¬ 
shaped bone, called the os pedis, which is the 6up- 
Fig. 1 . — horse’s foot. 
porting bone of the column of the leg, that at 
times the laminae of one foot support almost the 
entire weight of the horse, for the weight is borne 
very slightly upon the sole in most cases. There 
are about 500 laminae (so the books say,) in each 
foot, in all four feet, 2,000, of course, so that the 
weight which each one of these many thin laminae 
has to bear is only a pound or so at the most. 
I am led to this explanation of the mechanical 
construction of the 
horse’s hoof, not 
on account of the 
beautiful adapta¬ 
tion of the struc¬ 
ture to resist the 
jars and blows 
which it gets in 
daily use, but 
rather to enforce 
the great import¬ 
ance of sound hoof-walls, and to describe a shoe 
which I have had in constant use for some months. 
We all know that in icy weather horses must 
have sharp calks, and this is especially true in cities 
where the pavements are much more slippery in 
winter than in summer. Calks in horses’ shoes are 
very soon worn down flat, or pounded smooth, so 
that the shoe has to be taken off, new calks put on, 
or the old ones sharpened, and the shoe nailed again 
upon the foot. The hoof-walls, which we have 
seen support nearly the whole weight of the body, 
are thus weakened or destroyed by the nail-holes, 
(fig.l, a), and the horse sometimes rendered useless 
until a new horn has grown out upon the foot. A 
more frequent result is that the shoes tear off or 
are “thrown” or “cast” off, and the animal is 
not unfrequently strained by slipping, or his hoof 
further injured before the horse can be re-shod. 
The shoe I have been using avoids all this, in no 
new way in one particular—but quite new in another. 
There are calks 
provided which 
screw into the 
shoe, there being 
two toe - calks 
and one in each 
heel,making four 
to each shoe, fig. 
3. This is an 
ancient device, 
and one which 
has worked very 
well for 100 years for aught that I know. These 
screw calks, of soft iron, wear down smooth in 
half a day’s service, and then slip badly. Steel 
ones have been used, and these last longer, but do 
not hold so well upon pavements. The practice 
prevailed among some of changing one calk every 
day or two, so that the horse may always depend 
upon one to hold from slipping on each foot. 
Mr. Stone’s improvement consists in making an 
iron calk with a small steel core, fig. 4. In use, the 
iron, being soft, wears away, and the steel main¬ 
tains the point in good form a long time. When 
they wear they are of course 
replaced, one at a time pre¬ 
ferably, though it makes lit¬ 
tle difference, as all remain 
sharp. My horse, which has 
worn this shoe, has been 
shod but once this winter, 
but his calks have been re¬ 
newed several times. My 
attention was directed to 
these shoes by Mr. J. B. 
Olcott, the Agricultural 
Oracle of the “Connecticut 
Courant,” who has used them for eight winters. 
He writes very enthusiastically about them, and 
I must say I do not think him at all extravagant. 
Bight Angles. 
In laying out a new line of fence, staking out for 
a foundation, and in doing a thousand and one 
things, we have to lay off right angles, or it would 
be better if we would, rather than to guess at them. 
Most of us remember the “ asses’ bridge ” of the 
geometricians—that “ the square of the hypothe- 
neuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the sum 
Fig. 2.—CROSS-SECTION OF 
horse’s foot. 
Fig. 3.— THE SHOE. 
of the squares of the other two sides.” If one has a 
ten-foot pole—or a tape line, or even no measure at 
all but a bit of pack thread, he can lay off his right 
angle with great accuracy. The numbers 3,4,5, give 
the sides of the triangle. See figure 5. A, B, is the 
base line. The point C is fixed. Measure off three 
Fig. 4.— SECTION OF CALK. 
anythings (feet, yards, five-foot or ten-foot lengths), 
and drive a 6take at J), then measure off four 
lengths from C and five lengths from D, and thus 
determine the point E, which will be in a line at 
right angles to the line A, B, at C. This is abso¬ 
lutely a right angle, a6 may be proved practically 
-B 
Fig. 5.— PLAN FOR GETTING A RIGHT ANGLE. 
by putting another point on the line A, B, the other 
side of C, and finding that the distance to E will 
be the same as from the first B to E .—Three times 
three is nine; four times four is sixteen ; nine and 
sixteen is twenty-five—which is also five times five.. 
On the same prin¬ 
ciple one can nail 
three furring strips 
together for a big 
“square,” to get 
levels or to secure 
perpendicularity in 
posts, stanchions 
or erections of any 
kind—or to mark 
out right angles 
upon the ground. 
One or both of the 
sides forming the 
right angle must 
be arranged for 
a plummet or „ 
“plumb bob” as 6-TRIANGLE FOR PLUMBING. 
the workmen call it, as shown in figure 6. 
Cooling and Ventilation of Milk and Cream. 
While it is quite true that the utmost care as to 
the food which cows eat, and in the matter of 
stables and milking does not suffice to remove 
entirely what is known as the “ cowey odor,” it is 
a fact that a great part of it may thus be avoided, 
and that proper rapid cooling and ventilation of 
milk while cooling is of the 
greatest service in improving 
the flavor, and securing longer 
keeping qualities in the milk, 
the cream and the butter. A 
ventilated can or pail cover 
for milk placed in pools or in 
springs for cooling was intro¬ 
duced somewhat last year. 
This consisted of a tolerably 
close fitting cover having a 
large tube, four or five inches 
high in the top. This tube is 
divided perpendicularly by a 
septum or partition making 
virtually two tubes. One of 
these is closed at the top, 
but has a large opening in the side to the outer 
air, which is covered with wire gauze. The open¬ 
ing of the other half of the tube at the top ia 
covered also with gauze (see fig. 7). So long as tb« 
Fig. 7. 
