AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
4,57 
18W.] 
only partially stated. Had J. C. said what the room was 
used for, we could have replied underBtandingly—fresh 
slaked lime will take up carbonic acid, so will water, and 
so will several other things. 
Tlie Best Holiday Present .—Send to 
a relative notice that you have paid for him a year’s sub¬ 
scription to this journal, and every time a number arrives 
that friend will have a new reminder of your kindness. 
The hints and suggestions its pages will afford will be 
turned to profitable account, and supply additional cause 
of gratitude. 
Italian Onions. —It is astonishing to what 
size and excellence onions attain in warm climates, with 
suitable soil. The onions imported from Bermuda give 
some idea of this, hut those raised on our Mexican 
frontier, as at El Paso, are vastly superior to the Bermuda 
onions, and we did not suppose these could be equaled, 
until we recently received some from Wm. H. Carson, 
seedsman, No. 125 Chambers street, N. Y., which he had 
just obtained from Italy. There were five kinds, from 
moderate—indeed, one quite small size—up to those 
equal in size and quality to any we have met with. The 
two larger onions, a red, weighing 26 oz., and a white, 
28 oz. weight, each measured 17 inches in circum, 
ference. Mr. Carson expects to receive seed of these 
varieties, which, whatever it may do in the Northern 
States, will, in some of the Southern States and on the 
Pacific Coast, no doubt succeed well. In Southern Eu¬ 
rope these large onions are produced by sowing seed in 
Autumn, wintering the partly-grown bulbs in the ground, 
and in the Spring they start early, and grow to a great size. 
Viclt’s Illustrated Monthly Maga¬ 
zine.— Mr. James Vick, seedsman, ofRochester, N. Y., 
has for some years published his catalogue in the form 
of a quarterly, in which he gave many interesting horti¬ 
cultural items. He starts out for the coming year with a 
monthly, with the above title, and sends specimen num¬ 
bers nearly three months in advance of the regular issue. 
Mr. Vick, having had much experience as an editor, does 
not enter journalism as a novice, and his magazine will 
no doubt be interesting and useful. If any one man can 
carry on an immense soed business, run a seed farm, 
look after a florist’s establishment, and then, when he 
wishes a little recreation, can edit a Monthly Magazine, 
it is Mr. James Vick, to whom added years only seem to 
bring increased energy. We have only space to say that, 
in contents and mechanical execution, this specimen 
number is quite equal to his former publications, and 
that is saying a good deal. As his Monthly is only $1.25 
a year, its success would seem to be assured. 
Our Linseed Oil MssuufUrtaire.— 
The extent to which the manufacture of linseed oil is 
now carried on in the West, may be shown by the fact 
that there are three mills in Chicago, each turning out 
about 10,000 barrels of oil and 4.000 tons of oil cake yearly, 
using to produce these 250,000 bushels of flaxseed, all the 
growth of near by localities. St. Louis competes very 
closely with Chicago, if it does not surpass these figures. 
While we congratulate ourselves on this fact, we have to 
regret that the 12,000 tons of oil cake are worse than lost 
to us, because we sell them to our competitors in Europe, 
who feed this nutritions substance to cattle, making 
meat and manure with which their large crops are grown. 
This is a serious loss to us who should use every pound 
of our product and sell the meat and grain grown by it. 
Catalogues. —Comparatively few of the Cat¬ 
alogues for the spring of 1878 have come to hand, and in 
view of the crowded state of our columns at the close of 
the year, we defer a notice of those received until we can 
make a fuller and better showing. 
The Cahluige S’amily, its varieties, 
qualities, and culture, by David Landreth & Sons, Phila¬ 
delphia, Pa. A companion to the pamphlets on Root 
Crops, etc., issued by the same firm. Price 25 cents. 
Diking a Salt Meadow. —“ W. H.,” 
Long Island, N. Y. It is easy to dike a salt meadow by 
throwing up a hank to exclude the tide, and taking the 
material for the hank from a ditch inside of it. Muck 
will make a good material for the bank, but it is so easily 
burrowed by musk rats that the bank will not be perma¬ 
nent unless it is protected. If a fence of hemlock plank 
be built in the center of the dike, that will prevent the 
rats from burrowing through it. When the water has 
drained from the muck it will become solid, and the sur¬ 
face of the marsh will sink a foot or two perhaps as the 
water is drained off. An automatic sluice, as shown in 
the American Agriculturist , July. 1877. may be used, by 
which the drainage water will flow off at low tide, and 
tidal water be excluded. The cost of digging a ditch and 
throwing up a hank would he about 12(4 cents a cubic 
yard, or 27 cubic feet (that is 3 feet long wide and deep), 
To Boys and Oiirls.— We congratulate 
you on the arrangement made to supply a microscope to 
every family—oue that ^viil not be a mere useless, im¬ 
perfect toy, but a really good one. Full instructions for 
its use will go with the instrument, and the Editors will 
take some pains to give you interesting information from 
time to time in your own columns. We expect you will 
have little Microscope Clubs , the members of which will 
each prepare specimens that all can study and enjoy. 
It will be a capital amusement, full of instruction. See 
that you have as many microscopes as possible in your 
own neighborhood. When one of you cannot do it alone, 
it would be well for two, three, four or more of you 
to unite your efforts, and raise a premium club of sub¬ 
scribers, and perhaps own the premium in common, or 
join hands and get subscribers enough to procure the 
Great Dictionary for your school-room ; or if possible a 
sewing machine for some worthy poor woman ; or some 
article or articles of silver ware for your pastor, or a 
favorite teacher. Almost any one can alone get a multum 
inparvo knife or other small premium. The premium list 
goes on just the same as before. The microscopes do 
not interfere with them, but are an additional help in 
procuring subscribers. The microscope would be cheap 
at. $2.50, yet for a good deal less money any one can have 
both the microscope and the American Agriculturist all 
through 1S78, as explained elsewhere. 
Taliic ofSliaviug> nnt^Trimmings 
of Hide*.—" S. B.,” Kings Co., Nova Scotia. We have 
paid as high as $3 a two-horse wagon load for the trim¬ 
mings of green hides from a tannery. These contain a 
large proportion of water; hut if dry would be worth 
$1 per 100 pounds as compared with superphosphate at 
$2.50. The hide scraps, however, contain no phosphoric 
acid, being nearly all nitrogenous matter and very rich in 
ammonia. They should not he treated directly with 
sulphuric acid as bones are, but composted with earth 
and moistened with very dilute sulphuric acid, or dried 
and reduced to powder and used as guano is. 
A Fair IBitf, at the present attention given to 
“ athletic exercises ” is the following floating item: A 
Michigan farmer writes to the Faculty of a leading East¬ 
ern College: " What are your terms for a year ? And 
does it cost extra if my son wants to learn to read and 
write, as well as to row a boat? ” 
Hay Caps.-CaDing Harrow.—“M. 
C. S.,” Montgomery, Ala. We know of no one who 
makes hay caps for sale. They are so easily made that 
it is less trouble to make them than to send out to buy 
them. Shares’ coulter harrow, and the Nishwitz harrow 
act by cutting or slicing the sod, and do not tear it up; 
the Bradley reversible harrow acts as a smoothing har¬ 
row, which does not tear up the sod when drawn one 
way, and as a clearing harrow when reversed. This last 
is a most useful implement. All these harrows can be 
procured of R. H. Allen & Co., 183 Water St., New York 
Crackers for Horses. —The Russian 
cavalry are provided with a prepared food made of 
pounded oats, gray-pea flour, hemp-seed oil, and salt; 
this is made into a paste, and cut into thick cakes about 
4 inches across, perforated with holes to facilitate soak¬ 
ing in water, and baked. It is transported strung on 
wires in rations of 4 lbs. each, to be fed dry or soaked. 
TBi«* Arnold Arboretum.— A tract of 
land at Jamaica Plain, Mass., of about 130 acres is as¬ 
signed by Harvard University to the Arnold Arboretum, 
of which Prof. Chas. S. Sargent is the able director. It 
being desirable to have the land laid out to the best possi¬ 
ble advantage, and the income from Mr. Arnold’s bequest | 
not being equal to any extraordinary expenditure, Mr. 
Fred. Law Olmstead, so favorably known as a landscape 
architect, volunteered his services for the work, and a 
few of the wealthy gentlemen of Boston and vicinity, 
have volunteered the few thousands needed to pay the 
surveyors and draughtsmen. Thus this important pre¬ 
liminary work will he accomplished without drawing 
upon the proper income of the fund, and in a manner 
so thorough that it can not fail to he of the greatest value 
to the Arboretum—an Institution, to the development 
of which arboriculturists and lovers of trees, not only in 
America, but abroad, look with the liveliest interest. 
Bliistimjsr Log’s.— 11 R. G.,” Humboldt Bay, 
Cal., writes; “In your July No. you advise ‘ H. C. G.,’ 
to use dynamite in blasting logs. Here in California, 
where it is a common practice to blast logs from 8 to 12 
feet diameter, we use nothing hut blasting powder. 
Take a 1} or lj-inch auger, bore a hole in the side and 
middle of the log, not in the end, towards, and a little 
below the center, in the direction the log will split easi¬ 
est. put in the powder and fuse, put a rag or something 
dry on the top of it, and tamp with whatever is at hand 
and will pack. If well done, the log will seldom fail to 
split in halves. For blasting logs to fragments, use a 
larger auger, more powder, and do not bore below the 
center, but I believe dynamite would be best for that.” 
Basket Stems continued 
on page 48!. 
Horseshoe Nails by Machinery, 
Long after cut-nails were, in this country, made 
by machinery, wrought nails were still turned out 
by the slow process of heading each one singly, 
and when the still more difficult problem of a 
Fig. 1.— MACHINE-MADE NAIL. 
norseshoe nail was presented, it being so unlike in 
head and point to all other nails, it was the boast of 
the blacksmith that no machine would ever be in¬ 
vented that could turn out and point a horseshoe 
nail. In machinery, however difficult the task, 
some inventor has been found able to overcome 
it; and at the present day, the wide-awake black¬ 
smith, instead of defying invention to make a 
Fig. 2 .— MAKING HORSE-NAILS BY HAND. 
horse-nail, is glad to make use of the nails that the 
inventor’s machine turns out ready to his hand, 
and thus quietly acknowledges that these nails are 
better than those he could slowly fashion one by 
one from a piece of nail-rod. The Globe Nail Com¬ 
pany, of Boston, Mass., have been engaged since 
1868 in manufacturing horseshoe and other nails, 
and in perfecting the machinery for the purpose ; 
beginning on a small scale, they gradually enlarg- 
Fig. 3.— MACHINE FOR MAKING HORSE-NAILS. 
ed, until, at the present time, they have have an 
immense establishment, capable of turning out 
eight tons of finished nails daily. Their horseshoe 
nails are made from the best Norway iron, cold- 
rolled, and are remarkable for uniformity of size 
and perfect finish. The appearance of the nails is 
shown in fig. 1. Every one who has had anything 
