1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
97 
be screwed to the underside of the table, or a leath¬ 
er strap may be passed through two holes in the 
top of it, and one end of the lath is put through 
the loop, and made to rest firmly against the frame 
of the table. The bird may then be placed astride 
q j= tbo cushions, and strapped so as to confine the 
wings i or it may be placed upon its bach, 01 sicie, 
and one wing only confined. In this way any po¬ 
sition may be secured by which such operations as 
setting a broken leg or wing, trimming the feath¬ 
ers, washing, opening the crop to remove an en¬ 
gorgement, or caponizing, may be performed with¬ 
out any interference by the struggles of the bird. 
A Combined Bag-Holder and Truck. 
Being recently at a railroad depot, where a good 
deal of grain is received, we were much interested 
in a man filling some bags with wheat from a car, 
and trundling them away to a store-house. He 
used a bag-holder, whi'cli served also as a truck, 
upon which the filled bag could be wheeled away. 
We quickly sketched the bag-holder in our note¬ 
book, as a good thing to make known to our read¬ 
ers, not knowing then the name of the maker of 
it; but on our way home discovered in a catalogue 
of the Higganum Manufacturing Company, of Hig- 
ganum, Conn., an illustration of the same holder 
and truck. We give our illustration here, which 
shows for itself the character of the bag-holder, 
and the method of using it. For use in grist-mills, 
and barns or granaries, this handy contrivance 
would be found to save considerable labor and 
time, as when the bag is filled, it may be wheeled 
away by taking hold of the handles at the top, and 
BAG-HOLDER AND TRUCK. 
making a one-wheeled truck of the machine; the 
bag rests between the projecting legs. 
A Hon-patented Barrel Header. 
Not long since we saw in operation a useful con¬ 
trivance for pressing the heads of apple or egg bar¬ 
rels into place. Both apples and eggs require to 
be packed very firmly to enable .them to be trans¬ 
ported in barrels with safety. Apples loosely 
packed in a barrel will come to market in a very 
badly bruised condition, and if the packing around 
eggs is not very firmly compressed, the eggs and 
packing change places or get mixed up, and it is 
the eggs, and not the packing, which then suffers. 
A barrel of eggs properly packed, with layers of 
chaff or oats an inch thick between the layers of 
eggs, and three inches at each end of the barrel, 
will bear to be compressed as much as three inches 
with safety ; without this compression eggs are al¬ 
most sure to be greatly damaged. A barrel of ap¬ 
ples may fill the barrel to about two inches above 
the chime, and will bear to have the head brought 
down to its place. When barrels containing these 
perishable articles are thus packed, they may re¬ 
ceive very rough usage without injury to the con¬ 
tents. The header referred to consists of a bar of 
half-inch square iron rod, with a iarge eye or loop 
at one end, and at the other end two diverging 
hooks which grasp the bottom of the barrel. The 
bar is bent to fit the curve of the barrel. When in 
use, the hooks are placed beneath the lower chime 
of the barrel, one end of a short lever is placed in 
the eye, and the lever rests upon a block, which is 
set upon the head of a 
barrel properly placed 
in position. A strap or 
cord, with a loop or 
stirrup at one end, is 
fastened to the other 
end of the lever. The 
foot is placed in the 
loop or stirrup, and the 
weight of the body 
thrown upon it brings 
the head of the barrel 
into its place ; the hands 
being free, the hoops 
can be driven down 
tightly without the help 
of an assistant. Without the use of the cord 
and stirrup, two persons are required to head bar¬ 
rels, but with the aid of these the services of one 
can be dispensed with. 
BARREL-HEADER. 
To Mend a Broken Tug. 
No one should go from home with a buggy or a 
wagon without a small coil of copper wire and a 
“ multum in parvo ” pocket-knife. This knife, as 
its name implies, has many things in a little space, 
and, amongst other useful things, has a contrivance 
for boring holes in leather straps. In case a strap or a 
leather trace breaks, while one is on a journey, and 
at a distance from any.house, he would be in an awk¬ 
ward “fix” if without any means of repairing- 
damages. With the copper wire and an implement 
for boring some holes, 
less. Nothing holds a button upon one’s working 
clothes so securely as a piece of wire, and once put 
on in this manner, there is never any call upon the 
women of the house at iuconvenicnt times for 
Fig. 1.— REPAIRING TUG. 
thread and needle to replace it. The wire will 
pierce the cloth without any help, and nothing- 
more is needed than to pass it through each hole 
of the button and twist the ends to secure them. 
Fig. 2.— REPAIRING BUCKLE. 
cutting them off close with the knife. There is 
scarcely any little thing that w-ill be found of so great 
use about a farm, or a workshop, or in a mill, or 
even in a house, as a small stock of soft copper wire. 
---— 
Smoke-Houses, and a Substitute. 
When well done, smoking not only tends to pre¬ 
serve meat, but it imparts to it an agreeable and 
piquant flavor. To smoke meat well, there must 
be a convenient place in which to hang it, and a 
house so arranged that the meat may not be ex¬ 
posed to the heat, nor be liable to fall into the 
ashes. The smoke should be cold, or at least not 
so warm as to soften the fat of the meat. Prob¬ 
ably no districts have a better reputation for then- 
smoked hams, than Virginia, Maryland, and South¬ 
ern Pennsylvania. The method of smoking meat is 
the same in each of these localities. The smoke¬ 
house is a tight building, raised either upon brick 
pillars, or upon a brick base, in such a way as to 
be perfectly safe against rats, and impenetrable to 
flies. There are two apartments: one above in 
which the meat is hung, and a lower one, in which 
the smoke is produced by the slow burning of 
hickory or oak chips, sawdust, or brush, or corn¬ 
cobs. A smoke-house that is very common in Vir¬ 
ginia, is shown in figure 1. It is 16 feet high, and 
12 to 14 feet square, with a wooden frame, covered 
with matched boards, the joints covered over with 
battens so closely as to make the inside as dark as 
repairs can be made in 
a very few minutes. 
The ends of the broken 
strap or tug may belaid 
over each other or splic¬ 
ed ; a few holes bored 
in the manner shown in 
fig. 1, and some stitches 
of wire passed through 
in the way known 
amongst the ladies as 
“ back stitching.” The 
ends of the wire are 
twisted together, and 
the job will be finished 
almost as quickly as 
this may be read. If a 
buckle breaks, or the 
tongue of the buckle is 
drawn through, and 
made useless, the end 
of the strap may be 
turned back over the 
loop of the buckle, and 
the wire passed through 
the holes in the strap, 
as shown in figure 2, 
and the ends fastened. 
If it is a chain that 
breaks, the next links 
may be brought to¬ 
gether and wire wound 
around them in place of the broken link, which will 
make the chain serviceable until home is reached. 
In fact, the uses of a piece of wire are almost end¬ 
1.—VIRGINIA SMOKE-HOUSE. 
possible. The house is 1)uin upon oncK pmars, a 
foot high, to prevent rats from gaining access to it. 
The lower floor is of inch tongue-and-grooved 
