154 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
fire and water had no access ; these items, 
together with the spoiled locks, broken keys, 
doors hanging awry from a shrinking ol the 
wood and “settling” of the building, immov¬ 
able window sash, made a tenement which, 
notwithstanding its fine brown stone frontage, 
was unfit to be occupied by any family who 
wanted to live comfortably.— Hall's Journal 
of Health. 
DEATHS BY SCALDING AND BURNING. 
-•-- 
We still see reported, almost daily, an ap¬ 
palling number of deaths by bums and scalds, 
not one of which we take it upon ourselves 
to say need prove fatal, or would do so, if a 
few pounds of wheat flour could be promptly 
applied to the wounds made by fire, and re¬ 
peated till the inflammatory stage had passed. 
We have never known a fatal case of scald¬ 
ing or burning, in which this practice has 
been pursued, during more than 30 years’ 
experience, and having treated hundreds in 
both public and private practice. We have 
known the most extensive burns, by falling 
into cauldrons of boiling oil, and even molt¬ 
en copper, and yet the patients were rescued 
by this simple and cheap remedy, which 
from its infallible success should supplant all 
the fashionable nostrums, whether oil, cot¬ 
ton, lead-water, ice, turpentine, or pain ex¬ 
tractors, every one of which has been tried 
a thousand times with a fatal result, and the 
victims have died in excrutiating agony, 
when a few handfuls of flour would have 
calmed them to sleep, and rescued them from 
pain and death. Humanity should prompt 
the profession to publish and re-publish the 
facts on this subject, which are established 
by the authority of standard medical works 
on both sides of the Atlantic. Flour is the 
remedy, and the only one, in severe cases of 
scalding and burning, casualties which else 
so often destroy life. Let us keep it before 
the people, while the explosion of steam 
boilers and burning fluid lamps are so rife all 
over our country .—American Medical Ga¬ 
zette. 
EYES AND COLD WATER. 
--- 
The aquatic furor has become so general, 
that for the simple reason that cold water is 
a pure, natural product, it is claimed to be a 
universal and beneficial application. Arsen¬ 
ic is a pure, natural and simple product; so 
is prussiac acid, as obtained from a peach 
kernel. A single drop of tobacco oil will 
kill a cat or dog in five minutes. 
Many persons are daily ruining their eyes 
by opening them in cold water of mornings. 
Cold water will harden or roughen the hands, 
and much more will it do so to the many- 
fold more delicate covering of the eye ; or, 
t.he eye will, in self-defence, become scaly in 
th e manner of a fish ; that is, the coats of 
tine eye will thicken, constituting a species of 
cat eract, which must impair the sight. That 
wal er, cold and harsh as it is, should be ap¬ 
plied to the eye for curative purposes, in 
placo of that soft, warm, lubricating fluid 
whicd nature manufactures for just such 
purpo ses, indicates great thoughtlessness 
or great mental obliquity. Nothing stronger 
than hike-warm water should ever be ap¬ 
plied to the eye, except by special medical 
advice,; md under special medical supervis¬ 
ion; for we have only one pair to lose. 
Even wahn water should be applied only by 
closing th e eye and flapping it against the lid 
with the Land, patiently, scarcely letting the 
fingers toi ich the lid. This cools the eye 
more rapi dly than cold water does, and 
without th e shock, while its soothing effect 
is delightfi il, dissolving or washing out the 
yellow or i )ther matter which may have ac¬ 
cumulated over night, in half the time re¬ 
quired by cold water .—Journal of Health. 
COTTON AND ITS CULTURE. 
A carrespondent writes to the Farmer and 
Planter as follows: “We never could see 
the sense of throwing up, with great care, a 
high bed for cotton, and immediately set all 
hands to work to tear it down. We have 
tried various expedients, but never found out 
how to plant cotton until last spring. For 
this we acknowledge our indebtedness to 
Capt. Thomas Byrd, of Greenwood, from 
whom we received an implement for smooth¬ 
ing and opening the cotton bed, which does 
the work to perfection—a cover adapted pre¬ 
cisely to follow in the wake of the opening, 
leaving your beds nicely smoothed over, and 
ready for the reception of the seed, and a 
scraper to do the first working—decidedly 
the best implements we have ever seen. 
This forms a complete set of implements, 
adapted to cotton-culture, simple and cheap, 
which any good blacksmith and plovv-stocker 
can make easily. If Novice will try Capt. 
Byrd’s implements, and not agree with us, 
we will acknowledge the corn, and pay for 
them. Let us be understood, we are not 
puffing an implement manufacturer, but 
offering an acknowledgement due to a 
public-spirited planter who took the pains 
to set us right. By the way, while talk¬ 
ing, we may as well say that the best 
variety of cotton we have ever planted is the 
“ Calhoun Cotton.” Where it originated, we 
are not able to say. Capt. Byrd kindly sent 
us half a bushel of seed, from which we have 
picked 511 pounds of very beautiful cotton. 
The overseer counted seventy bolls on one 
stalk not over knee high. It is no humbug, 
for we have selected our seed for years from 
fancy stalks, and being side by side, we have 
been compelled reluctantly to give it up. We 
trust that even Brooinsedge may be allowed 
to puli' a home-made article. Before closing, 
we must dissent, however, from Novice’s de¬ 
claration. Twelve hundred pounds cotton 
per acre on common land—stand or no stand 
—it is no common land that will average 
seventy bolls of matured cotton per stalk.” 
Planting Sweet Potatoes in Level 
Ground. —The old method of planting sweet 
potatoes in hills and ridges, in this dry cli¬ 
mate, and on our hard, upper country lands, 
is all wrong. Potatoes must have moisture 
and soft earth to do well.. But they lack both 
in the common culture. Hills and ridges are 
the driest forms in which you can put the 
soil. Flat culture is the only right kind for 
potatoes, or anything else in our burning 
climate, and on our clay uplands. Potatoes 
should be planted as flat, and may in that 
way be planted as easily as corn. 
First, break up the land well; then lay off 
rows four feet wide with a shovel plow; run 
deep in the same track with a rooter, and 
then, if you want it perfect, deeper still in 
the same furrow with a common new-ground 
coulter. Next, list upon both sides of this 
in the same way; that; is, with shovel, root¬ 
er and coulter—one right in the track of the 
other. This makes deep work, and the 
deeper the better. It is soon done Your 
ground is now ready—deep, loose, and moist, 
and will keep so. all summer. 
Now for planting and culture. With a 
rooter draw a shallow furrow on the top of 
the list, just over the first shovel track, to 
guide you in dropping. In this drop the seed, 
cut roots, sprouts or vine cuttings, 12 or 15 
inches apart, and cover lightly. Plow them 
a few times, just like corn, running close to 
the potatoes with a rooter, and finish off each 
working with a cultivator, or some other 
plow, to keep the middles flat. 
This mode of culture is not one-fourth as 
troublesome as hills ; the crop is wonderful. 
This is not theory, but is my constant prac¬ 
tice. By this mode the vines never turn 
yellow ; the crop comes forward early in 
August, and the owner has no chance to 
complain of “ small potatoes .”—Southern 
Cultivator. 
- -i.i .1 wt mgrryam— - 
CULTIVATION OF THE GROUND OR PEA NUT, 
Thinking that a few hints on the cultiva¬ 
tion of the ground-nut, would not be alto¬ 
gether unacceptable to the readers of the 
Horticulturist, and might be of assistance to 
those wishing to grow them, I am induced 
to write this article—more, however, with 
the desire that its cultivation may be better 
known than to give any particular plan for 
raising it. 
The proper time for planting is about the 
10th of May, or as soon as all danger of frost 
is over. It would be better, in northern lati¬ 
tudes, to plant them in boxes or hot-beds, so 
as to have the advantage of as long a season 
as possible, since on this the crop greatly 
depends. The soil should be sandy, or light. 
A heavy soil should be avoided ; for though 
the ground-nut will grow in such, yet, where 
one has the choice of a sandy soil, to that he 
should give the preference. They should be 
planted about two inches deep, in rows, fif¬ 
teen inches apart—even two feet would not 
be two far, the branches grow long. The 
rows should not be less than three feet apart. 
After the vines have made some growth— 
say six or eight inches—the soil should be 
hoed over them, leaving an inch or two of the 
ends exposed. This should be done every 
two or three weeks, according as the vines 
may grow, so that but two or three inches of 
the ends of the vine may be uncovered. On 
this also the yield depends ; for if it is not 
done, the nuts will not half ripen. 
Whether north of the latitude of Philadel¬ 
phia the ground-nut could be cultivated 
without the aid of a hot-bed, I am unable to 
say; but I think that they could be success¬ 
fully south of it. 
As to the yield, I can not speak to any 
certainty, but I have seen over thirty to one 
root. They can be purchased at most of 
the confectionary stores at six to eightcents 
per quart.— Horticulturist. 
Red Ants. —Red Ants, are worrying 
plagues to housekeepers. The Public Ledg¬ 
er calls for a recipe against the vermin. 
Spirits of turpentine on a small sponge tied 
at the end of a stick, will, with a little man¬ 
agement, bespread like ^ vapor over the 
shelves of a pantry, effectually ridding you 
of the vile thing. But many persons think 
the cure worse than the evil, disliking the 
smell of turpentine, therefore I give a recipe 
I have used successfully. It is this : Spread 
over the shelves infested by the red ant, 
leaves of green sage. This I have known 
to act like a charm in getting rid of the ant. 
Spirits of turpentine applied in a similar 
manner to the newly commenced nests of 
caterpillars among your apple trees, I have 
always found a sure disposer of that pest to 
the orchard. Farmer. 
- Cash and Credit. —If you would get rich, 
don’t deal in pass-book. Credit is the 
“ tempter in a new shape.” Buy dry goods 
on trust, and you will purchase a thousand 
articles that Cash would never have dreamed 
of. A dollar in the hand looks larger than 
ten dollars seen through the perspective of 
a sixty-day due bill. Cash is practical, 
while Credit takes horribly to taste and ro¬ 
mance. Let Cash buy a dinner, and you 
will have a beef-steak flanked with onions. 
Send Credit to market, and he will return 
with eight pairs of woodcocks and a peck of 
mushrooms. Credit believes in double- 
breasted pins and champagne suppers. Cash 
is more easily satisfied. Give him three 
