883 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November; . 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist. 
While at the Post Office last night , the Post Master handed me your Oc¬ 
tober number to look at. My eye first fell upon your exposure of Humbugs 
on page 296. As I had just sent $ 5 to Geo. F. Humbug ( Hamilton ), for 
a ticket in the “ Grand Social Banquet ” at Holderncss, N. H., I hur¬ 
riedly looked into my pocket book , and found that I too had paid for ticket 
No. 3769. Three neighbors came in , and seeing me anxious about something , 
they looked over my shoulder at the article in the Agriculturist , and as it 
proved , they had each sent $5 for Ticket No. 3769. The way we looked 
about that time , or at least the way we felt, I have tried to sketch with my 
pencil, as you see above... .As a precaution for the future, we have con¬ 
cluded to have the Agriculturist hereafter. I was urged to take it last year 
but thought I could not afford it. I now see I could. Enclosed please find 
$4 for the fov/r names below - or above. Yours, etc., -. 
Barnstable CoMassOct . 14 ? 1861. 
Small Humbugs—Recipe Peddlers. 
Recipe peddlers are the vermin of the hum- 
tribe. It requires something of a genius to 
originate and successfully carry on a swindling 
lottery or gift enterprise, or some scheme re¬ 
quiring extensive advertising and general noto¬ 
riety ; but the recipe peddler can crawl about 
from house to house, almost unmolested, and 
like a predatory insect take a bite here and 
there to the great annoyance of his victims, hut 
without exciting sufficient public notice to make 
his depredations hazardous. A man will usually 
suffer from a flea bite rather than he seen hunt¬ 
ing for the insect, and in like manner, one who 
has been taken in by a petty swindler, general¬ 
ly prefers to keep quiet about it, rather than be 
laughed at; and thus these vermin are usually 
allowed to go unmolested. A few illustrations of 
the habits and practices of the tribe will be suf¬ 
ficient to guard the readers of the American Ag¬ 
riculturist from their inflictions. 
The recipe peddler usually offers for sale the 
secret of making honey, or vinegar, or soap, or 
some other common household article, with lit¬ 
tle or no trouble, and at a very trifling cost. 
Frequently he exhibits professed samples of his 
manufacture. He goes industriously from house. 
to house, never remaining in a place long 
enough for his recipes to be put to the test, and 
the deception exposed. Sometimes the direc¬ 
tions given are good, but they could have been 
found in almost any recipe book, at one-tenth 
the price paid to the swindler. Quite often, 
however, the information imparted is entirely 
worthless. Here is a case in point: A subscri- 
oer lately paid fifty cents for the following 
soap recipe, which we copy verbatim: 
' me pound of Auvoniacum, two pounds Ros- 
n , one pint of Aicobol, one quart of Salt, one 
pound of Cooper’s Isinglass, one peek of Corn 
ileal silled (!) to eight gallons of Rainwater, 
boiling when you put the pre¬ 
paration in. Then let it boil 
for five minutes, then set it off 
to cool. William Taylor. 
The peddler said this com¬ 
pound would make 100 lbs. 
of soap, at a cost of only one 
dollar. One half the requir¬ 
ed quantity was purchased 
for something over a dollar, 
and the directions duly fol¬ 
lowed. The result, as our 
informant says, was no more 
like soap than hasty pudding. 
It was good for nothing in 
the house; the pigs turned 
up their noses at it and ran 
away with a derisive squeal, 
and the whole was thrown 
on the manure heap. It 
would not be advisable for a 
recipe peddler to visit that 
house again, but the fifty 
cents was not entirely lost if 
the experience be heeded by 
the readers of the American 
Agriculturist. 
A WORSE IIUMBUG-SILVER¬ 
ING POWDERS. 
To-day, (October 1st,) we 
were followed two blocks by 
a vagabond, who poured out 
the foulest profane language 
imaginable, and we were ac¬ 
tually compelled to hand him 
over to a policeman. Our offence was “ interfer¬ 
ence in his business” in this “free count ry,” where 
“ every man had a right to follow whatever honest 
calling he chose.” The gist of the matter was 
this: Passing the corner of Pearl and Fulton 
streets, we saw the fellow taking in the shillings 
at a rapid rate from a lot of poor women, who 
evidently had but few more left, and for what ? 
Why a little box of a clay paste which was 
“warranted to beautifully coat with silver any 
article of copper, brass, german silver, etc.” 
And in proof of the assertion, a little of it was 
rubbed upon a brass stair-rod, upon old fashion¬ 
ed copper pennies, and upon brassy spoons, 
and sure enough they did glisten with a brilliant 
silver lustre. Indignant at the deception, we 
ventured to tell the eager purchasers that the 
quicksilver, (mercury,) thus applied would last 
but a brief time, and, what was worse, it would 
eat into and spoil the surface of any kind of 
metal to which it would give the luster. 
Let us here warn the readers of the American 
Agriculturist that these silvering powders and 
fluids so frequently sold about the country by 
peddlers, and by ignorant or unprincipled mer¬ 
chants, are all of the same class. They will pos¬ 
itively spoil the surface of copper, brass, german 
silver, or silver itself. Rub a few coatings upon 
a silver coin, and it will become as brittle as a 
pipe stem. They are either mixtures of quick¬ 
silver with colored clay or other material, or 
they are clear or colored solutions of quicksil¬ 
ver in nitric acid (aqua-fortis) diluted with wa¬ 
ter. Certain metals, such as copper, brass, sil¬ 
ver, etc., reduce the quicksilver to its metallic 
state, and give a bright silvery luster; hut this 
will quickly tarnish, while the quicksilver will 
dissolve or eat into the metal itself, just as a 
drop of water will affect a lump of sugar. Fine 
emery or clay is useful to brighten surfaces of 
genuine silver, but there is no preparation that, 
without the aid of a galvanic battery, or heat, 
will give a coating of real silver. Strong heat 
will expel (evaporate) quicksilver;, and if the 
reader has been injudicious enough to use any 
of these so-called silvering powders or washes,, 
the best thing to he done is to at once heat the 
article strongly to expel the last trace of the 
noxious mercury. Miners frequently triturate 
or beat up gold-bearing rocks or sand with 
quicksilver, which dissolves out the gold as wa¬ 
ter would dissolve out particles of salt. The- 
sand particles float upon the heavy quicksilver, 
and are removed. The liquid is then heated 
strongly, which evaporates the quicksilver, leav¬ 
ing the pure gold in a mass, or in fine powder, 
to be melted together. Silver can be separated 
in the same way. The quicksilver escaping in 
the form of steam or vapor, is collected in cold 
receivers as it escapes, and is used over again 
and again. This explains why such large quan¬ 
tities of quicksilver are sent to California, and 
also why the discovery of quicksilver mines 
there increased the value of the gold mines. 
Have You an Ice-House? 
It can be made very cheaply, and when the 
luxury of ice in Summer is once enjoyed, it will 
not be readily given up. If no better structure 
can be erected, build an ice room in one corner 
of the wood house, or any shed where room can 
be spared. The north-east corner is best. Set 
a row of upright posts one foot from the inner 
sides of a building, and two rows of posts a foot 
apart, for the other two sides of the room; make, 
the enclosure say eight or ten feet square. Cover 
these with rough boards or slabs, and fill the. 
space between with spent tan bark. Lay down; 
a loose floor, and cover a foot deep with straw.. 
When ice is formed, select that which is pure,, 
clear, and hard, cut it into pieces of convenient, 
size, and pack it closely in the room. Leave- 
six inches space between the ice and the sides 
of the room, and fill this with sawdust. Also, 
cover with saw-dust a foot thick, and fill 
up to the roof with straw. Packed in this way,, 
ice enough to supply a family of average size 
has been kept safely, the season through. 
A Vegetable Curiosity,. 
The above illustration represents a singular 
growth made by a potato, which was forward¬ 
ed to the office of the American Agriculturist by 
Mr. George C. Hance, Middlesex Co., Conn. 
The tuber, while small, found its way into a 
knot hole in a piece of lath which lay near it, 
and as it grew, enlarged on each side of the hole, 
so that it can not now be withdrawn without 
breaking either the potato or the lath. A friend 
relates that he once saw a pumpkin in a some¬ 
what similar “fix.” It attempted to grow 
through a rail fence, but only half succeeded, and 
formed a double pumpkin, about half being on 
each side of the fence. Young gardeners might 
take a hint, from these samples, and produce 
amusing vegetable curiosities, by introducing 
young fruits into some vessel that will give 
them a singular shape; thus a melon might be 
forced to resemble a human head and face, etc. 
