52 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
When a chicken has been cut, it is necessary 
before letting it run, to put a permanent mark 
upon it; otherwise it would be impossible to 
distinguish it from others not cut. I have been 
accustomed to cut off the outside or the inside 
toe of the left foot, by this means I can distin¬ 
guish them at a distance. Another mode is to 
cut off the comb, then shave off the spurs close 
to the leg, and stick them upon the bleeding 
head, where they will grow and become orna¬ 
mental in the shape of a pair of horns. This 
last mode is perhaps the best, but it is not so 
simple and ready as the first. Which ever 
mode is adopted, the fowl should be marked 
before performing the operation, because the 
loss of blood occasioned by cutting off the comb 
or a toe, makes the fowl less likely to bleed in¬ 
ternally during the operation. 
It is very common, soon after the operation, 
for the chicken to get wind in the side, w r hen 
the wound is healing, between the flesh and the 
skin ; it must be relieved by making a small in¬ 
cision in the skin, which well let the wind es¬ 
cape. 
Those fowls make the finest capons which 
are hatched early in the spring; they can be cut 
before the hot weather comes, which is a great 
advantage. 
Never attempt to cut a full frown code; it is 
a useless-and cruel piece of curiosity. I have 
never hnown one to live. 
The first efforts at acquiring this art should 
be made on dead subjects ; this will save the in¬ 
fliction of much cruelty. 
Be not discouraged with the first difficulties; 
with practice they will disappear; every season 
you will find yourself more expert, until the 
cutting of a dozen fowls before breakfast will 
be a small matter. The best time for operating 
is early morning. 
It may be w r ell to give a warning against be¬ 
coming dissatisfied with the tools. A raw 
hand, when he meets with difficulties, is apt to 
think the tools arc in fault, and sets about to 
improve them and invent others; but it is only 
himself that lacks skill, which practice alone can 
give. I have spent money, besides wasting my 
time in this foolish notion, but have always 
found that the old, original tools, ichich came 
from China, and where this mode of operating 
was invented, are the best. 
Take care that the tools are not abused by 
ignorant persons attempting to use them ; they 
will last a person’s life time if properly used; 
but if put out of order, none but a surgical in¬ 
strument maker can repair them properly. 
The object of giving publicity to this, is to 
have the markets of Philadelphia and the other 
cities of the Union, well supplied with Capons ; 
“they have ever been esteemed one of the 
greatest delicacies, preserving the flavor and 
tenderness of the chicken, with the juicy ma¬ 
turity of age.” In the Paris and London mar¬ 
kets, double the price of common poultry is 
obtained for capons. 
Considering the abundance and excellence of 
poultry in the United States, it seems surprising 
that the. art of making capons should be almost 
entirely unknown—it is hoped that this defici¬ 
ency will now be supplied.—J. G. Wissaiticon, 
near Philadelphia. 
-*« •- 
GUANO AT HOME. 
The anxiety felt in ’the public mind on the 
guano question, the discussion of probable sub¬ 
stitutes at a cheap rate, and the temptation of 
“present prices,” induce us to still pursue a 
subject so fraught with interest to the agricul¬ 
turist Though guano, at half its price, may not 
be obtained in illimitable quantities, there are 
many substitutes of a value nearly approaching 
it, which may be available at our very doors. 
Its economical qualities are extreme portability, 
high solubility, and cheapness, from its being 
useful only for the land, and therefore having 
no great competition from the manufacturing 
classes. For portability, we do not know its 
equal. Most manures contain vast masses of 
inapplicable material. We hardly know any 
perfectly free from useless compounds or from 
water. They are bulky or heavy, for instance, 
in proportion to the fertilizing material. Chem¬ 
istry has shown that on ordinary cultivated land, 
phosphoric acid and ammonia are amongst the 
principle means of obtaining a crop of almost 
any kind; and though it would not argue that 
either carbon or lime, or possibly potash, could 
for ever be dispensed with, still they are the 
leading features of all good manures. And 
there are few manures which can be purchased, 
which are holding their elements so free as to 
be directly assimilated—ammonia ready formed 
and bone earth very finely disintegrated; (but 
most of them have to change) and yet so safely 
held that ordinary preservation will prevent 
their dissipation and loss. 
Though we are not sanguine as to any real 
substitute for guano, equal in fertilizing ele¬ 
ments, illimitable in quantity and for one hun¬ 
dred shillings per ton, we say we still think we 
have home resources of vast agricultural value. 
We allude not hereto the sewage of towns—im¬ 
mense as is the value which they possess—be¬ 
cause we think we know not, at least as yet, 
sufficient to say which process shall be applied 
to every town in the kingdom with its black, 
stagnant, poisoning effluvia stagnating and des¬ 
troying all around by fever and cholera, and a 
thousand other unsuspected and unseen diseases. 
Attention has been directed to our internal 
resources in various ways, from cattle bones to 
locked-up coprolites; but an idea of the origin 
of guano will at once point out to us some 
sources of partial supply. The guano islands 
contain 27 millions of tons of guano, or 9G7,680 
million ounces. Vast as is this quantity, it 
might be deposited by 409,899 birds, if each 
voided only one ounce of excremen per day, in 
say six thousand years. And this is all decom¬ 
posed fish—-first, with all the gelatine dissolved 
out to build up the bird structure; then the 
bone earth finely pulverized by the process of 
digestion, assisted by the waste; the urinary or 
ammonical discharge of the birds all incorpor¬ 
ated in the dung, and this denuded of moisture 
and a little reduced by fermentation under a hot 
sun and in a rainless atmosphere. Rievera saw 
the dung itself, from being white, change color, 
during his survey of those islands by the pro¬ 
cess of fermentation. 
And have we no cheap fish, no refuse? and 
have we no chemical agent which can imitate 
the sea-bird’s gastric juice, to reduce the fish and 
refuse to some portable, some concentrated, and 
some cheap manure? Let it not be supposed 
we are puffing Petitt’s process of drying and 
rendering soluble in sulphuric acid, or Green’s 
cheaper and more simple process of making fish 
manure; but we have vast amounts of cheap 
fish and of fish refuse and waste, which are of 
immense agricultural value. Every fishing town 
witnesses the most disagreeable of all sea-side 
scenes—heaps of fish entrails and dead dog-fish 
thrown sweltering on the sands, and offending 
the senses both of smell and taste, in a degree 
which it is surprising the “spawers” submit to 
for a moment. 
For more than 40 years, fish have been used 
as manure. The sticklebacks, which abound in 
the slow streams or rivers in the marshes, are 
so numerous as to sell for as little as eight-pence 
per bushel; sprats have been successfully used 
in hop-grounds in Kent. The refuse of the pil¬ 
chard fisheries in Cornwall have long ago proved 
an excellent manure. It was even calculated by 
Mr. William Young, of Inverugie, that the re¬ 
fuse of the herring fishery of Scotland alone, if 
preserved and made into compost—the bulky 
nature of making in his day—they would suffice 
to manure 3,GOO acres of land. 
Dr. Apjohn, in a recent paper before the Royal 
Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland, 
and referred to at the English Society last week, 
shows the agricultural value of fish to be very 
great. lie analyzed the haddock and the whit¬ 
ing,' and found that the former contained 3.53 
per cent., and the latter 3.43 per cent, of nitro¬ 
gen, and that dried, they contained respectively 
13.76 per cent., and 14.43 per cent. 
He calculates that abstracting the oil, which is 
worth in some fish a considerable sum, drying 
the fish, and treating with sulphuric acid, the 
sprat and the herring, though worth £3 per ton, 
are more calculated to make fish guano than 
either the haddock or the whiting, which with 
refuse can be had at half that price. 
He gives us the analysis of a specimen of the 
fish guano prepared according to Petitt’s plan, 
which he had analyzed, and the constituents are 
many of them of great agricultural value. They 
are as follows: 
Water expelled by a heat of 212 degs... 8.06 
Sand. 0.33 
Oil..... >40 
Organic matter. 50.72 
Super-phosphate of lime. 0.85 
Sulphate of lime hydrated. 19.62 
Sulphate of magnesia. 0.71 
Sulphate of potash. 2.05 
Sulphate of soda. 2.42 
Chloride of sodium. 1-12 
Sulphate of ammonia. 2.72 
100.00 
The per centagc of sulphate of ammonia, or of 
ammonia in any form, will at once strike those 
acquainted with the valuable parts of guanos, 
but it is considerably understated when calcu¬ 
lated as nitrogen; for though the saline ammonia 
is only about 0.G7 per cent., the ammonia equiv¬ 
alent to nitrogen of organized matter amounts 
to 9.46 per cent., in all giving 10.13 per cent, of 
ammonia. The question occurs, does this stand 
equivalent to 10.13 per cent, of ready formed 
ammonia? This we must see experimentally- 
tested ; but we must also bear in mind that if 
decomposition is required to develop the am¬ 
monical contents of the fish guano, the phos¬ 
phate is more soluble than it is in the natural 
guano. In the latter it is simply bone earth or 
finely comminuted phosphate of lime; in this it is 
the super-phosphate, arising from a small quan¬ 
tity of free sulphuric acid. Dr. Apjohn esti¬ 
mates the value of the constituents thus: 
Ammonia. 6.00 pence per lb. 
Bone phosphate. 0.75 
Gypsum and accompa¬ 
nying sulphate. 0.16 
Bi-phosphate. 3.75 
Giving the fish guano as worth £9 10s. 9d. per 
ton. He applies the same tests as to price to Peru¬ 
vian guano, and it is worth £10 18s. 6d. per ton. 
These facts alone, without either condemning 
or recommending Pettit’s, or Gautier’s, or 
Green’s process, show that we have the elements 
at home of making some not very despicable 
substitutes for guano.— Marie Lane Express. 
--- 
ELASTIC STEEL DIGGING FORKS. 
AN ENGLISHMAN CLAIMS TOE HONOR OF THIS 
YANKEE INVENTION. 
At page 9 of our current volume, we recorded 
the fact that Mr. Henry Partridge, of Midfield, 
Mass., was the first inventor and manufac¬ 
turer of the “Elastic Steel Digging Forks.” 
But it seems from the following article, that a 
Mr. Parkes, of England, now very modestly 
claims the improvement. We should be glad if 
Mr. P. would inform the public when he com¬ 
menced these improvements. We opine it was 
soon after and not before the opening of 
the Crystal Palace in London, when the Am¬ 
erican Elastic Steel Fork, manufactured in Mas¬ 
sachusetts, was first exhibited to the British 
public. These unquestionably were their first 
models to work from. 
London, Dec. 5, 1853. 
Messrs. Burgess & Key, Newgate street. 
Agreeable to your request, I proceed to des¬ 
cribe to you the origin of steel forks for dig¬ 
ging manure and other purposes, and the ad- 
