394 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
inside furring. The inevitable consequence 
is, that when a fire breaks out, it spreads 
with incredible rapidity through these hol¬ 
low spaces lined, with wood, which extend 
from basement to attic, and all hope of ex¬ 
tinguishing the flames is at once abandoned. 
On the other hand, a house built at no more 
cost, with hollow brick walls and brick par¬ 
tition, is nearly fire-proof. In a country 
house, built in this way, nine times out of 
ten a fire would never spread beyond the 
room where it originated ; and, in almost all 
cases, it could be extinguished with but lit¬ 
tle eftert, by the inmates alone, since all the 
means of rapid communication, actually pro¬ 
vided in the usual and most careless mode 
of building, is wanting in a house built with 
hollow walls.” E. Emerson. 
CJreencastle, Penn. 
The Rice Crops. —The Southern journals 
represent that the rice crops are unusually 
flourishing, and that the indications promise 
more than an average yield this season. 
Fine Oats. —Three farmers'in one of the 
towns of Penobscot county, Maine, have their 
oats sowed in such a manner as to form a 
continuous field three miles long. It is esti¬ 
mated that the crop of the three will reach 
six thousand bushels. 
To Prevent Bots in Horses. —A person 
of much experience in veterinary science, is 
never troubled with this disease in horses. 
His simple practice during the fall months 
is, to keep a greasy cloth in the stable, and 
once a week rub with it such parts of the an¬ 
imal as may have been attacked by the nit- 
fly. Grease destroys and prevents the eggs 
from hatching. 
Fleas, Bed-Bugs, &c. —A writer in Gard¬ 
ner’s Chronicle recommends the use of oil 
of wormwood to keep off the insects above 
named. Put a few drops on a handkerchief 
or a piece of folded muslin, and put in the 
bed haunted by the enemy. Neither of these 
tribes can bear wormwood, and the hint is 
especially commended to travelers who are 
liable to fall among the topers of blood. 
Prolific Cow. —Mr. Benjamin P. Pryor, 
one of the city watchman residingon French 
Garden Hill, owns a milk cow that has 
dropped four live and healthy calves within 
the past thirteen months. Last spring she 
dropped twins, and on Wednesday last she 
performed the same remarkable feat. Three 
of these four calves are now alive and doing 
well. The cow, it is said, will give three 
gallons of milk per day. 
From a measurement made in Syracuse, 
for the past eighteen years, it appears that 
fifty per cent, more rain has fallen since the 
first of May than for the same period in any 
previous year during that time. 
A Capital Suggestion. —The Scientific 
American says that if builders fill up spaces 
between every wall and flooring with sea 
sand, no fire could communicate from one 
apartment to another. The staircases, if 
constructed of iron, on the geometrical prin¬ 
ciple, would prove non-conductors, space 
would be economized, and the chambers 
enlarged. Balconies running from house to 
house, on every floor, are the most desirable 
of all fire escapes. 
“A little humor now and then, 
Is relished by the best of men.” 
SPECIMENS OE SYDNEY SMITH’S TABLE TALK 
Specimens of Sydney Smith’s table-talk 
are given in his Life, though not so liberally 
as might have been expected. We give some 
extracts from them and from the most char¬ 
acteristic passages of his correspondence, as 
illustrative of his “ own peculiar” wit and 
humor, his proper individuality of thought 
and phrase. 
Some one asking if the Bishop of-was 
going to marry? “Perhaps he may,” said 
the Canon ; “ yet how can a Bishop marry 1 
How can he flirt 1 The most he can say is, 
‘ I will see you in the vestry after service.’ ” 
“ It is a great proof of shyness to crumble 
bread at dinner,” in his opinion. “ Oh, I 
see you are afraid of me,” said he to a young 
lady who sat by him,—“ you crumble your 
bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of 
London, and with both hands when I sit by 
the Archbishop.” 
Of the Utilitarians in general, and one in 
particular, he says : “ That man is so hard 
you might drive a broad wheeled wagon over 
him and it would produce no impression ; 
if you were to bore holes in him with a gim¬ 
let I am convinced sawdust would come out 
of him. That school treat mankind as if 
they were mere machines ; the feelings or 
affections never enter into their calculations. 
If everything is to be sacrificed to utility, why 
do you bury your grandmother at all ? why 
don’t you cut her into small pieces at once, 
and make portable soup of her 1” 
“ Dear Bobus,” he writes to his brother 
in 1813, “ pray take care of yourself. We 
shall both be a brown infragrant powder in 
thirty or forty years. Let us contrive to 
last for the same, or nearly the same 
time.” 
To Lady Holland he writes in 1810 : “ We 
liked Mrs.-, It was wrong, at her time 
of life, to be circumvented by-’s dia¬ 
grams; but there is some excuse in the nov¬ 
elty of the attack, as I believe she is the first 
lady that ever fell a victim to algebra, or that 
was geometrically led from the paths of dis¬ 
cretion.” 
To Lord Murry, in 1821: “ How little 
you understand young Wedgewood ! [inven¬ 
tor of the Wedgewood ware.] If he appears 
to love waltzing, it is only to catch fresh 
figures for cream jugs. Depend upon it, he 
will have Jeffrey and you will enjoy an ar¬ 
gillaceous immortality. 
Arrived at Dover, soon after the construc¬ 
tion of the “ shaft,” he mentions it as “ a 
staircase, by which the top of the cliff is 
reached with great ease—or at least what 
they call great ease, which means the loss 
of about a pound of liquid flesh, and as much 
puffing and blowing as would grind a bushel 
of wheat.” 
“ Mr. Jeffrey,” he writes to the Countess 
Grey, “ wanted to persuade me that myrtles 
grew out-of-doors in Scotland, as here. 
Upon cross-examination, it turned out they 
were prickly, and that many had been de¬ 
stroyed by the family donkey.” 
“Luttrell,” he writes in-! 1829, from the 
Combe Florey parsonage, “ came over for 
a day, from whence I know not, but I 
thought not from good pastures ; at least, he 
had not his usual soup-and-pattie look. 
There was a forced smile upon his counten¬ 
ance, which seemed to indicate plain roast 
and boiled ; and a sort of apple-pudding de¬ 
pression, as if he had been staying with a 
clergyman.” 
Alludingto the tumult at Jeffrey’s election, 
in 1830, he inquires of Murray : “ Is Jeffrey 
much damaged. They say he fought like a 
lion, and would have been killed had he been 
more visible ; but that several people struck 
at him who could see nothing, and so batter¬ 
ed infinite space instead of the Advocate.” 
Jeffrey’s size appears to have been an in¬ 
exhaustible source of amusement to the 
“ round, fat, oily ” Priest of St. Paul’s. 
Sydney tells Francis Broughman of having 
just returned from Portugal, where the in¬ 
quisition, according to rumor, seized and 
singed him with wax-tapers as an Edinburg 
reviewer; “ They were at first about to 
use flambeaux, conceiving him to be you; 
upon recurring to the notes they have made 
of your hight, and error was discovered of 
two feet, and the lesser fires only adminis¬ 
tered.” (1806) Again: “ Magnitude to you, 
my dear Jeffrey, must be such an intoxicat¬ 
ing idea, that 1 have no doubt you would 
rather be gigantic in your errors, than im¬ 
mense in no respect, whatever,” &c. 1808.) 
Elsewhere :—“ My dear Jeffrey, are we to 
see you 1 —(a difficult thing at all times to 
do.”) &c. (1809.) In 1829 he writes to Mur¬ 
ray : “ I can not say the pleasure it gives me 
that my old and dear friend Jeffrey is in the 
road to preferment. I shall not be easy till 
he is fairly on the Bench. His robes, God 
knows, will cost him little—one buck rabbit 
will clothe him to the heels.” Maxim us mini¬ 
mus was one of the appellatives wherewith 
Sydney loved to magnify the great little 
man. 
In the same letter; “I think Lord Grey 
will give me some preferment, if he stays in 
long enough; but the upper parsons live 
vindictively, and evince their aversion to a 
Whig Ministry by an improved health. The 
Bishop of-has the rancor to recover, af¬ 
ter three paralytic strokes, and the Dean of 
-to be vigorous at eighty-two. And yet 
these are men who are Christians!” 
To Lady Holland, and from Combe Flo¬ 
rey : “ Philosopher Maluhus came here last 
week. I got an agreeable party for him of 
unmarried people. There was only one la¬ 
dy who had a child ; but he is a good-na¬ 
tured man, and, if there are no appearances 
of approaching fertility, is civil to every 
lady.” 
To Dr. Holland, in 1835 : “ I am suffering 
from my old complaint, the hay fever, (as it 
is called.) My fear is, perishing by deliques¬ 
cence ; I melt away in nasal and lachrymal 
profluvia. My remedies are warm pedilu- 
vium, cathartics, &c., &c. The membrane 
is so irritable that light, dust, contradiction, 
an absurd remark, the sight of a dissenter, 
—anything, sets me sneezing ; and if I be¬ 
gin sneezing at 12,1 don’t leave off till 2 
o’clock, and am heard distinctly in Taunton, 
when the wind sets that way—a distance of 
six miles.” 
“ Mr-,” he tells Lady Davy, “ is go¬ 
ing gently down hill, trusting that the cook¬ 
ery in another planet may be at least as good 
as in this ; but not without apprehension that 
for misconduct here he may be sentenced to 
a thousand years of tough mutton, or con¬ 
demned to a little eternity of family din¬ 
ners.” 
Here is yet another heaven after another 
man’s ideal. To Sir Roderick Murchison he 
writes : “ May there not be some one among 
the infinite worlds where men and woman 
are all made of stone ? Perhaps of Parian 
marble 1 How infinitely superior to flesh 
and blood ! What a Paradise for you, to 
pass eternity with a greywacke woman !” 
In his last illness he writes to the Count¬ 
ess of Carlisle: “ I am in a regular rain of 
promotion ; from gruel, vermicelli and sago, 
I was promoted to panada, from thence to 
minced meat, and (such is the effect of good 
conduct) I was elevated to a mutton chop. 
My breathlessness and giddiness are gone-™ 
