G 
[January, 
1 qunrt ruin water, 1 gill Beef’s Gall, and 1 gill Spirits of 
Turpentine : out the soap linn and (toil five minutes; stir 
while boiling, ami color with half ounce Vermillion; 
«co t u nil oil ill Rose or Almond 
t Remark —Too much gall and turpentine, and vermil¬ 
ion, for a pleasant soap to think of. But we can’t make 
he fortune out of this, without another recipe for induc- 
ne men to shave (their faces) more than they now do.] 
2fi. H ard Solder. — Copper 2 parts, melt; add tin, 1 part. 
27. Soft Solder.— Tin 2 parts, Lead 1 part; melt. 
[ Remark — What shall we melt the copper in! What 
sha 1 we use the hard solder for? Rather too much tin in 
the soft sold r.] 
as. Silver Plating Fluid.— Dissolve 1 ounce of Ni¬ 
trate of Silver in crystal, in 12 ounct s of solt water. Then 
dissolve in the water 2 ounces Cyanuret of Potash. Shake 
the whole together, and let it stand till il becomes clear. 
Have ready some halfour.ee vials, and fill them half full 
of Paris White or fine Whiling; and then fill up the bot¬ 
tles witii the liquor, and it is ready for use. The Whit¬ 
ing does not increase the coating power, it only helps to 
(dean liie articles, and to save the Silver Fluid, by half 
filling the bottles. 
[Remark— This, without the Paris White, w ill usually 
leave a thin film of silver on bright metal surfaces, but 
needs the aid of a galvanic battery to deposit a durable 
silver coating.] 
29. Great Pain Extractor.— Spirits of Ammonia 1 
ounce. Laudanum 1 ounce, Oil Origanum 1 ounce, Mut¬ 
ton Tallow half pound; combine iho articles with the 
tallow, when it is nearly coid. 
[Remark— Does the adjective great refer to the “pain,” 
or to the " extractor ”? We don’t know how great a pain 
his would extract] 
39. !i atckes. — T he ends of the tapers, or wood, should 
ne verv drv, and I lien dipped in hot melted Sulphur, and 
laid as’i !e to drv. Then tar.e 4 parts of Glue, dissolve it, 
and w hen hot, add 1 part of Phosphorus, and stir in a few 
spoonfuls of fine Whiting, to bring it to proper thickness. 
[Remark— We tried this when a boy, but the phospho¬ 
rus would take fire when added hot, or heated. More¬ 
over, the match factories furnish ready made matches 
cheaper than we could whittle out the wood. Home¬ 
made matches don’t pay, now-a-days.] 
31. Process of Taming IIobses.— This consists in 
using a medicine. There are three different articles used. 
The medicine has the effect to make the horse remarka¬ 
bly affectionate. It creates fondness, and you keep this 
fondness up hv kind treatment, &<:. The articles are 
n cd in the nostrils. One is a powder, the oilier articles 
are Oils. The powder is used first. A common sized 
quill lull in each nostril, of the powder, and two drops 
i ach of the oils. The first article used is the button from 
lhe horse’s leg. You procure this and dry it, and pulver¬ 
ize it as fine as you can ; then use it as stated above. 
Tiie oils aie the oils ol Rhodium and Cumin. This will 
cure stubborn horses, that refuse to work, &c. Some 
make high wages by breaking cattle and horses by this 
process. 
[Remark— 1 This nonsensical and utterly absurd recipe 
has for a long lime been advertised and sold to the more 
ignorant classes at prices varying from $1 to $5, Only 
last. Summer a man tried to hire us to insert an adver¬ 
tisement offering it to any one who should send him $2. 
He professed to have got his information from Mr. Rarey.] 
We have not room for the retraining 19. These will be 
given in our next, with notices of some other “adver¬ 
tisements.” 
Scientific and Practical Talks about 
Manures — I. 
INTRODUCTORY-HOW PLANTS GROW. 
Many millions of dollars are annually ex¬ 
pended for manures in our country, especially in 
the Eastern or older sections At the West, 
where a virgin soil is yet rich in organic treas¬ 
ure _the leaf-mold and the grass-mold ac- 
eumulated during centuries past — the subject of 
manures has not required nor received much 
attention; yet the constant disappearance of 
these natural deposits, and the economy of hus¬ 
banding the materials now in possession, an 
r.ually render this subject more and more im 
portant to Western cultivators. It is not a fanci¬ 
ful or bap-hazard assertion to say, that for all the 
time and labor expended in accumulating and ap- 
ph ing fertilizers, the country over, the returns, the 
profits, are not half what they would be if people 
knew just when and how to apply these fer¬ 
tilizers to the best advantage. The subject of 
manures is, therefore, one o.f the highest 
magnitude, and demands constant, attention. 
We have been almost censured by some for 
the comparatively little space we have hitherto 
devoted to so important a subject. It may be 
said in excuse, that we are unwi 'ng, on this or 
AGRICULTURIST. 
any other topic, to try to enlighten others where 
we are ourselves in the dark, n erely for the 
sake of appearing to be wise. The theory of 
manuring is not fully understood. The most 
erudito scientific men are yet groping in the 
dark; even Liebig lias had occasion to 
change his views and his teachings more than 
once within twenty yea’rs. The agricultural 
chemists,who were yesterday all confident in their 
mineral theories, are today hesitating, doubting, 
retracting. In illustration of this we cannot do 
better than to repeat a recent quotation from 
Prof. Johnson, who spent a year or two with 
Baron Liebig, and whose constant devotion to 
the science of agriculture, entitles his opinions to 
weight. He says ; 
“ We are every day drifting further from what 
hut a few years ago was considered one of the 
most fixed and beneficial principles of agricul¬ 
tural science ; viz.: that a substance is chiefly a 
fertilizer because it directly feeds the plant; and 
are learning from the numerous recent and care¬ 
fully conducted experiments with manures, that 
in very many cases we cannot safely venture to 
predict what will he the influence of a given 
application; but find in practice the strangest 
and most discordant results, it being possible to 
show from the experiments of the farm that 
almost every fertilizer in use has, in some in¬ 
stances, proved beneficial to every cultivated 
crop, and in other cases has been indifferent or 
even detrimental.” 
Among the most intelligent cultivators the 
greatest diversity of practice—practice founded 
upon observation, too—still exists. Our own 
former opinions, once thought to be surely 
founded, are constantly yielding to new light, 
and we confess to having less and less confidence 
in what now seems to be well established 
theory. We must then be excused for hesitat¬ 
ing in discussing theories where so much 
doubt yet exists. 
Still, the best way to arrive at correct con¬ 
clusion is to agitate the subject, to state theories, 
to collect facts, to make experiments, elc. We 
purpose to take up the subject of manures, in, a 
somewhat formal series of articles, introducing 
what appears to us to he ihe best theory of the 
action of manure, and the best practice derived 
both from theory and observation. 'Phis discus¬ 
sion will be valuable to every cultivator. 
As manures are designed to enter into or 
stimulate the growth of plants, it will greatly as¬ 
sist to an understanding of the subject if we 
first briefly inquire in a general manner 
IIOW PLANTS GROW. 
When a seed of any kind is placed in Ihe soil 
near the surface, with the aid of warmth, moist¬ 
ure, and air, it germinates or sprouts. One little 
shoot, called a radicle, grows downward, and 
sends forth branching ro'ots. Another shoot, 
called a plumule, starts upward towards the light. 
At first these shoots are nourished by the sub¬ 
stance or meat of the seed. But afterward, the 
roots, or leaves, or both, gather food from the air. 
As fast as food is obtained and appropriated, 
the plant increases in size, and constantly sends 
out new leaves artd new rootlets. The process of 
growth is similar in all plants—in grasses, 
grains, trees, etc. The spire of grass or of 
grain gets its food, circulates its sap, and in¬ 
creases in bulk, as does the apple tree or oak. 
Let us now, for convenience of illustration, take 
the partly grown tree, and inquire where and 
how it gets its food, remembering that all wild 
and cultivated plants are nourished in a similar 
manner. If we carefully wash away the soil 
around a stalk of growing corn, or the base of a 
tree, we shall find the larger roots subdivided 
into smaller and smaller branches, until they 
terminate in an immense number of minute 
fibers (many millions on each plant), the small¬ 
er ones being too minute to he seen without a 
magnifying glass. The roots draw in water or 
sap from the soil, and carry il to the base of 
the stem. This water or sap contains dissolved 
matter, which takes part in the nourishment of 
the plant. The roots serve not only to gather 
sap, but they also attach the plant to the soil, 
and sustain it in an upright position. 
The roots converge at or near the surface of 
the ground, and form the stem or trunk. This 
consists essentially of long fibers closely packed 
together, with contiguous cells extending from 
the roots up to the leaves. The branches 
or limbs are only subdivisions of the trunk itself 
The leaves are in reality an expansion of the 
stem above, just as the roots are an expansion 
of its lower end. The frame-work of ihe 
leaves, is made up of a series of cells pack¬ 
ed together in two layers—an upper and 
lower one—and covered over with a thin layer, 
or epidermis. 
It was formerly supposed that the food of the 
plant came from the ground. This is a mistake. 
The greater part of the plant food comes from 
the air. [Just hotv much comes from the soil, 
and how much from the air, and whether the 
food is mainly carried into the plant through the 
leaves, or chiefly through the roots, dissolved in 
rain water, are points upon which scientific men 
differ. These are important questions, for upon 
them depend the theory and practice of manur¬ 
ing, the best kinds and forms, etc.] 
Illustrations. —1st. A few feet of soil, made up 
chiefly of clay and sand, will bear a majestic 
tree, containing many cords of wood, in which 
are scores of bushels of charcoal. This wood 
arul this charcoal could not have come from ihe 
few feet of clay and sand. 2d. A few pounds of 
grass seed on an acre of loam (sand and clay) 
will yield tun after tun of hay, without diminish¬ 
ing the soil in bulk. In fact the soil is in¬ 
creased somewhat. This hay can not come from 
the soil. The truth is, the great bulk of trees, of 
hay, of corn, and of all other plants, comes from 
the air. " 1. When a log or a heap of man¬ 
ure rots, or when wood and coal burn up, they 
are not annihilated ; but their little particles go 
off into the air, one by one, and float about 
unseen. These separate particles arc each so 
small that we can neither see them depart, nor 
see them after they are in the air. Nor can we 
see them as they are again gathered by the 
leaves, or by rain water, until a great number are 
united together in the plant. But it is neverthe¬ 
less true that new plants are thus made up of the 
very materials of which other plants were pre¬ 
viously composed. And so the process of decay 
and new growth goes on in one continual round. 
These general explanations will be found use¬ 
ful in discussing what kinds of manures to use, 
and how to apply them, which we shall talk 
about hereafter. 
Chloroforming 1 Bees. 
We have heard ofscveral instances where chlo¬ 
roform has been used to stupefy bees in exam¬ 
ining hives for moths or other purposes, in remov¬ 
ing honey, and in transferring bees from one hive 
to another. It is only necessary to close the hive 
sufficiently to prevent egress, and then place in it 
at. some point, a sponge or cloth saturated with a 
little chloroform so as to fill the hive with the va¬ 
por. As soon as the bees are sufficiently stupe 
AMERICAN 
