AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
101 
where they may do good as it is to dump 
them into the street. 
WATER FOE CATTLE IN WINTER. j 
If you have not made provision for this in¬ 
dispensable article, you are now feeling the 
inconvenience of the neglect. It is a serious 
undertaking to drive all the stock from the 
bam a quarter or half a mile to a spring or 
brook, and cut holes in the ice for them. 
The snow is often deep, the ice slippery, and 
the weather intensely cold. Accidents some¬ 
times happen—a limb is broken by a fall, and 
the weaker animals do not get a full supply 
of water. The animals are thoroughly 
chilled through by the ice water and the 
cold, and it takes a large quantity of food to 
restore their bodies to their natural warmth. 
There is a great loss of flesh irom your cat¬ 
tle, of hay from your barn, and of money 
from your purse, by this daily journey to a 
distant watering place. The loss is enough, 
on a large farm, every winter, to pay for per¬ 
manent fixtures for watering in the barn, or 
in the yard. Now while you and your cat¬ 
tle are suffering from the inconvenience, 
make your plans to remedy it. 
If there is a living spring on high ground 
within a half mile of your barn, bring it into 
the yard with a lead pipe. With a large 
trough as a reservoir, a pipe of small bore 
will furnish an ample supply. This can be 
done before another winter sets in, and will 
not be a very costly affair. If there is no 
spring or brook that you can make available, 
it is quite possible that you can dig a well on 
the nearest high land that will give fall 
enough to conduct its waters where you 
want it. An examination of the ground, and 
the use of a water level, will enable you to 
decide upon its practicability. If this can 
not be done, the next best thing is a cistern 
on one side of your barn cellar, or if you 
have none, under your barn ; as a rule a bam 
roof will catch water enough to supply all 
the cattle it shelters during the three months 
of winter. If properly protected it will not 
freeze, and if you have a stop-cock from the 
cistern emptying into the water trough, it will 
be found a very convenient and economical 
method of supplying a barn with water. We 
have used a cistern for this purpose two 
winters, and find that it answers all our ex¬ 
pectations. Immediately adjoining it is a 
oot, room, and we find a large body of water 
so near is a great safeguard against frost. 
In mixing cut hay and meal with roots, as 
every good farmer should in winter, it is a 
great saving of time to have the water in the 
same room with the other materials. But if 
you will not build a cistern, you can at least 
dig a well and furnish it with a bucket and 
trough. This, to be sure, will take time and 
labor, but it will be found far less expensive 
than to suffer your cattle to go a long dis¬ 
tance to drink, shivering with the cold, wast¬ 
ing their droppings, and iujuring your mow¬ 
ing fields. For it is a well ascertained fact, 
that both pastures and meadows are dam¬ 
aged by leaving the snow trodden down hard 
upon them in the winter. In some way pro¬ 
vide water for your barn, and let this nui¬ 
sance of freezing cattle be abated. 
RADISHES IN MARCH. 
Now is the time to be thinking of the 
frame and glass to plant the seeds under, if 
you really mean to indulge in that luxury. 
Dr. Kane found them at Upper-navik, in 
northern Greenland, grown in the garden of 
the Governor of that Danish settlement. “A 
little paling, white and garden like, inclosed 
about ten feet of prepared soil, covered with 
heavy glass frames; under which, in spite of 
the hoar frost that gathered on them, we 
could detect a few bunches of crucifers, 
green radishes, and turnip tops.” * * * 
“ At last came the crowning act of hospi¬ 
tality ; on the bottom of a blue saucer, radia¬ 
ting like the spokes of a wheel or the sticks 
of a Delaware’s camp fire crisp, pale yet blush¬ 
ing at their tips, and crowned each with its 
little verdant tuft —ten radishes! Talk of 
the mango of Luzon and the mangostine of 
Borneo, the cherimoya of Peru, the pine of 
Sumatra, the Seckel pear of Schuylkill 
meadows ; but the palate must cease to have 
a memory before I yield a place to any of 
them along side of the ten radishes of Up¬ 
per-navik.” 
You may not have the Doctor’s experience 
of a year’s residence on the Polar sea to 
sharpen your appetite, yet radishes next 
month at your tea-table will be a treat worth 
looking after. You can have them with half 
the pains taking of the Danish Governor, and 
in much greater abundance. It does not re¬ 
quire high heat or very thick glass to secure 
them. A hot-bed four feet by ten, started 
the middle of this month, will give you rad¬ 
ishes before the markets afford them. Gen¬ 
tlemen who have their greenhouses, and are 
now luxuriating upon fresh strawberries 
from their own pots, do not of course need 
our exhortation. But those who have not 
yet this convenience for winter luxuries, 
may accomplish much with a hot bed. The 
capabilities of the hot-bed are far from hav¬ 
ing been exhausted. 
NEW-YORK STATE POULTRY SOCIETY. 
The annual exhibition of this Society opens 
at Van Vechten Hall, Albany, on the 12th 
inst., and continues through the 13th and 14th 
There is a prospect of a fine show, and as 
we hear of no move towards a National 
Show in this city, there will be a consider¬ 
able concentration of interest in the show at 
Albany. The Cor. Sec., E. E. Platt, of Al¬ 
bany, has furnished us with the names of the 
following Judges : 
1. Of the largest and best variety—Geo. 
Vail, Troy; A. A. Hudson, Syracuse; L. 
F. Allen, Black Rock. 
2. Of the larger Asiatic Fowls—George 
Vail, Troy ; J. M. Lovett, Albany ; John H. 
Cole, Claverack. 
3. Of other Gallinaceous Fowls—A. A. 
Hudson, Syracuse ; R. U. Sherman, Utica ; 
Wm. Frothingham, Albany. 
4. On Aquatic, Pea and Guinea Fowls, and 
Turkeys—Lewis F. Allen, Black Rock; R. 
C. McCormick Jr., N. Y.; R. L. Colt, Pat¬ 
erson, N. J. 
5. On Pigeons, Singing Birds, and Rabbits 
—C. S. Platt, N. Y.; R. R. Bingham, Al¬ 
bany ; T. C. Abraham, Watervliet. 
FARM WORK GETTING EASIER. 
When we were boys, and that not long 
ago, a dozen implements comprised about 
all that were constructed to lighten the la¬ 
bors of farmers and farmers’ boys. The 
plow, harrow, hoe, spade or shovel, scythe, 
cradle, sickle, rake, pitchfork, fanning-mill, 
and two or three others, comprised the list 
to be looked to or looked after. We well re¬ 
member the first threshing machine that came 
into “ our neighborhood,” followed soon af¬ 
ter by a “ patent” fanning-mill; and what 
light work the horse-rake made ; and how 
our backs straightened up when we got our 
first cultivator ; and we might describe the 
wonder and delight excited at the introduc¬ 
tion of each successive new implement, but 
our readers perhaps recollect these things 
as well as we do, and their imaginations will 
supply the materials of the article we might 
write on this subject. 
We do not remember a single establish¬ 
ment devoted exclusively to the sale of ag¬ 
ricultural implements twenty years ago, and 
now we could reckon up hundreds, many of 
them selling tens of thousands, and many of 
them hundreds of thousands of dollars worth 
of farm labor-saving machines every year. 
We have before us a catalogue of agricul¬ 
tural implements sold by one dealer, and it 
would require this whole page to print the 
names only of the things he offers. In the 
last Patent Office Report printed, we find a 
record of 1,760 patents for new machines 
granted during 1854, and 171 of these, or 
one-tenth, are set down as agricultural im¬ 
plements, leaving only nine times as many 
for all the other various departments of man¬ 
ufactures. Improvements are going on at a 
rapid rate, and we can hardly predict to 
what point we shall arrive even in ten years 
to come. We already sow our grain, har¬ 
vest and thresh it, by machinery ; and very 
soon the steam engine will be hitched on to 
these implements, and to the plow and har¬ 
row besides, and we shall only need to watch 
these silent but faithful forces while they do 
our work. Y’oung farmers and farmers’ 
sons, wake up and catch the spirit, of this 
age, or you will ere long be left in the back 
ground. 
TO MAKE LARD AND TALLOW CANDLES. 
The following method of making the above 
named candles is described in the New-Eng- 
land Farmer by a correspondent: “ I kept 
both tallow and lard candles through the last 
summer, the lard candles standing the heat 
best, and burning quite as well, and giving 
as good light as tallow ones. Directions for 
making good candles from lard : For 12 lbs. 
of lard take 1 lb. of saltpeter and 1 lb. of 
alum; mix and pulverize them; dissolve the 
saltpeter and alum in a gill of boiling water ; 
pour the compound into the lard before it is 
quite all melted ; stir the whole until it boils, 
and skim off what rises ; let it simmer until 
the water is all boiled out, or till it ceases to 
throw off steam; pour off the lard as soon as 
it is done, and clean the boiler while it is hot. 
If the candles are to be run, you may com¬ 
mence immediately; if to be dipped, let the 
lard cool first to a cake, and then treat it as 
you would tallow.” 
