AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
243 
MOWING. 
We copy the following good advice about mow¬ 
ing from the Germantown Telegraph , although 
mowing-machines are so much used now, as to 
render the hand scythe unnecessary, except in 
the roughest ground. Mowing with a machine 
is an easy, aristocratic affair now-a-days. All 
one has to do is, put on his white Jcid gloves, 
take the reins of a pair of fine horses in hand, 
mount a cushioned seat, and away he goes as 
easy and gentlemanlike as any nabob of the 
land. No bending, and almost breaking of the 
back; no blistering of the hands to almost raw¬ 
ness, as ours have often been at the beginning of 
haying; no pouring out of perspiration all over 
the body, making frock and trousers as wet as 
if one had been pitched into a river. All that 
is changed now; and we expect to see the day 
when to find the hand scythe, we shall have to 
look for it as intently in some odd museum, as 
we would for an old-fashioned hand spinning- 
wheel. 
It may not, perhaps, be amiss to offer a few 
remarks at this time, on the subject of mowing. 
There are few employments in which the young 
farmer is called to engage, which more severely 
task the physical powers, or which require a 
greater amount of skill and endurance than 
mowing. Yet every beginner is emulous of be¬ 
ing the first, of carrying the forward swath, 
and of being thought the best mower in the 
field. By the young, this emulation is always 
indulged, and it not unfrequently results, al¬ 
most as a matter of course, that serious injuries 
are experienced by the ambitious aspirant, 
which, without securing any solid advantages, 
render his existence wretched, and entail ex¬ 
pense and misery both upon himself and friends. 
Those young men who contemplate farming 
as the future business of their life, should begin 
mowing young. I have never yet known an 
expert master of the scythe, who commenced 
late. At the age of fourteen, the youth should 
be provided with a light scythe and snath, and 
put to work by himself. If introduced into a 
field with others who are older and more expe¬ 
rienced, he will be stimulated to over exertion, 
and be rather disposed to excel in swiftness, 
than in cutting his grass well. If alone, this 
stimulus will be wanting, and he will rather 
take pride in performing the exercise with ease 
and neatness, than in being a “ swift mower,” 
and will not be so likely to injure himself, or 
“leave his wages in the field.” 
In mowing, there are two things of conse¬ 
quence to be observed. I refer to what is called 
“pointing in,” and “pointing out.” The first 
refers to the correct manner of entering the 
scythe, which should be so done, as to leave the 
swath as square and even as the side of a drain, 
or ditch; and the latter, to the method of bring¬ 
ing it out—the point of the scythe entering the 
grass at all times, at a uniform distance from 
the roots, should be carried round on a level, the 
heel dropped so as to make level without any 
“comings” between the strokes, and come out 
on an exact level with the previous swath. The 
swath should be long enough to allow of the 
operator standing erect; for the more nearly the 
position of the body, in this exercise, approxi¬ 
mates a perpendicular, the less will be the fa¬ 
tigue, and the greater the facility of execution. 
No good mower ever stoops, unless the habit, 
which is a pernicious one, has been acquired 
young.— An Old Mower. 
-•-*-#- 
Dreadful,— On the 18th ult. a little son of 
Wm. Taylor, of Randolph county, Indiana 
aged four years, died of delirium tremens. It 
was a horrible sight, says the Winchester Em - 
Mem, to see the little fellow screaming at, and 
jumping from the snakes that he thought he 
saw. The father of the boy was an intemperate 
man. 
NITROGEN-AMMONIA. 
It was the pleasure of the writer to enjoy a 
long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Samuel 
W. Johnson, while we w'ere working and 
studying together in the laboratory of Prof. 
Norton, at Yale College. We speak our 
own opinion, and that of all others who know 
Mr. Johnson personally, when we say that lie is 
an intelligent, skillful, and careful experimentor 
and investigator. Having availed himself of 
every facility afforded in this country for pur¬ 
suing chemical analysis, and for studying the 
chemical rotation of crops and soils, he some¬ 
time since went to Germany, to enjoy the addi¬ 
tional advantage of studying with some of the 
ripest scholars of that country. He is now at 
Munich, prosecuting his studies under the cele¬ 
brated Liebig, and we trust that when he again 
returns to this country he will be able to do 
much towards advancing the cause of scientific 
agriculture, a subject in which he is intensely 
interested, having himself been brought up a 
practical farmer. In a recent number of the 
Country Gentleman, we find a letter from Mr. 
J. on the subject placed at the head of the arti¬ 
cle, which will be interesting to those who take 
any pleasure in reading those things more im¬ 
mediately relating to the chemistry of agricul¬ 
ture. The following is the letter entire : 
The nature of the sources of food of vegeta¬ 
bles is a topic of deep interest to the farmer 
who is intelligent in the study and pursuit of 
his profession. But a very few years have 
elapsed, since this subject began to excite the 
attention of those capable of subjecting it to a 
successful examination, and to-day we are in 
the midst of an era which is occupied with 
solving the problem. Already so much is 
known with regard to this matter as to furnish 
one of the most interesting chapters in physical 
science. Yet from year to year the, formerly 
received principles require extension and cor¬ 
rection from the results of new researches. 
The farmer knows that the muscle which 
sustains his labor, and the nerve which impels 
and guides it, contain as an invariable and es¬ 
sential ingredient, a substence called azote, or 
nitrogen. He knows that it most be contained 
in his food in order that it support life, and of 
course also must be obtainable by the vegetable, 
which is the only ultimate source of animal nu¬ 
trition. It is assumed as a general thing that 
the chief hindrance to perfect vegetable devel¬ 
opment is a deficiency of this body, or at least 
a deficiency of those forms of it which are ca¬ 
pable of giving it to the plant. 
Chemistry teaches that there occur in nature, 
but three bodies which can directly supply the 
vegetable kingdom with the nitrogen needful 
for its growth. These are, 1st, the free nitro¬ 
gen of the atmosphere; 2d, ammonia, existing 
in air, in water, and in the soil; and 3d, nitric 
acid in union with ammonia, potash, soda, or 
lime, in the atmosphere, in water or in soils. 
It is proposed in this paper briefly to review 
the facts and doctrines hitherto received con¬ 
cerning the availability of each of these bodies 
as sources of vegetable nutrition, and to bring 
forward the interesting results of recent inves¬ 
tigations. 
1. To what extent is atmospheric nitrogen 
directly assimilable by plants ? 
Four-fifths of the air which constantly bathes 
the leaves of plants is nitrogen.* The result 
* The mixture known as atmospheric air, is composed, 
under aimost.all circumstances, quite uniformly as follows : 
In 10,000. 
Nitrogen,. T912 
Oxygen,. 3080 
Carbonic acid,. 4 
Carburetted hydrogen,.. 4 
Ammonia,.. trace. 
10,000 
of nearly every one of the earlier investigations 
was, however, that this nitrogen does not con¬ 
tribute directly to vegetable growth, and ac¬ 
cordingly in the standard treatises on the 
chemistry of vegetation it is accepted as a fact, 
that nitrogen is acquired by the plant from 
other sources. Boussingault, indeed, was led 
by some of his grand trials to suppose that 
atmospheric nitrogen might be directly absorb¬ 
able, but his results have been usually explained 
in another way. Very recently, investigations 
have led to the fact that the nitrogen of common 
air is actually absorbed and assimilated by 
plants. Dr. Knop, of Leipzig, in a series of 
experiments upon aquatic plants, found that 
shoots of the common “ cat-tail,” when brought 
into glass vessels, inverted in water and partly 
filled with an air consisting | of nitrogen and i 
of oxygen, (in such proportions are oxygen and 
nitrogen found in the air which is dissolved in 
spring water,) in a short time completely ab¬ 
sorbed it. During the last two seasons, Ville, 
a French chemist, has experimented with 
tobacco, the sunflower, and wheat, in the fol¬ 
lowing manner. He sowed seeds of those 
plants in soil free from all nitrogen, viz., pure 
sand mixed with the ashes of the plant experi¬ 
mented with, and contained in a glass chamber, 
the air of which was statedly renewed. He de¬ 
termined accurately the small quantity of ni¬ 
trogen which the imprisoned plants could re¬ 
ceive from the ammonia of the air admitted to 
them; he also found how much the seeds sown 
originally contained; the sum of these two, 
however, in every case fell short of the amount 
of nitrogen existing in the plants at the conclu¬ 
sion of the experiment. The difference, so far 
as can be seen, must have been furnished by the 
atmospheric nitrogen. 
The only report of his experiments that I 
have seen, does not afford any data for ascer¬ 
taining what plants assimilate the nitrogen most 
readily, and therefore stand least in need of 
artificial nitrogenous manures; but we may 
hope before long to learn many facts of practical 
importance from the prosecution of similar but 
more extended inquiries. 
2. What part does ammonia and its com¬ 
pounds play in vegetable development ? 
By whatever natural process animal and vege¬ 
table matters containing nitrogen are destroyed, 
whether by undergoing the changes that ac¬ 
company animal nutrition, by burning, or by 
decay, their nitrogen is converted into the com¬ 
pound called ammonia. Tn nature ammonia 
always is found in the state of carbonate, (salts 
of hartshorn, smelling salts,) which, as is well 
known, is so volatile as to diffuse itself rapidly 
through the air, and as nitrate which is highly 
soluble in water, but not volatile. Ammonia 
itself is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. 
According to Mulder, the humus, or vegetable 
matter of the soil devoid of nitrogen, in its de¬ 
cay evolves free hydrogen, which at the mo¬ 
ment, unites with atmospheric nitrogen, pro¬ 
ducing ammonia. The animal kingdom fur¬ 
nishes indirectly a large share of the ammonia 
that occurs in nature. The muscles, nerves, 
and other tissues of an animal, as is well known, 
are constantly wasting as a result of their use, 
and as constantly being renewed from the mate¬ 
rials of the food. In the animal as well as vege¬ 
table, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of the 
food, are mostly reduced to bodies of very sim¬ 
ple constitution, as carbonic acid and water, and 
in these shapes separated from the system 
through the lungs, (leaves,) or by the perspira¬ 
tory process through the skin. In the animal, 
however, the used-up nitrogen is not excreted 
as gaseous ammonia, for that would be highly 
disagreeable were it to pass off as carbonic acid 
does in the breath, but the urinary functions 
are charged with its excretion, and from them 
it is separated in the solid form, and to a great 
extent as a substance which may be obtained 
in beautiful white crystals, and which is known 
to the chemist as urea. This body, dissolved 
in the urine, very soon becomes decomposed, 
and what is remarkable, it falls directly into car- 
