54 
fA'ME RICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
ent, going over the field, fence-corners, and 
wherever they abound, cutting off the flowers 
or tops with a scathe, will do the work if pur¬ 
sued two or three years carefully. We never, 
in all our observations, saw a farm so thoroughly 
free of weeds as the Highland Farm of the late 
George Sheaff, Esq., in Montgomery county, and 
the measure he adopted was to top all trouble¬ 
some weeds before the seeds matured. Some 
few, as dock, will have to b8 taken by the 
roots.— Germantown Telegraph. 
TREATMENT OF BROOD MARES. 
In the Patent Office Agricultural Report of 
1852 and 1853, there is a communication from 
Mr. J. L. Bakhorpe, of Salem, Fauquier, Co., 
Va., from which we make the following ex¬ 
tracts : 
The cost of rearing a colt until three years 
old. —A good colt at weaning—say four months 
—is worth twenty-eight dollars; first year’s 
keeping, twelve dollars; second year, fifteen 
dollars; next twelve months, fifteen; which 
will bring the colt to three years at a cost of 
seventy dollars. Average value at that age, 
ninety dollars. 
Treatment of brood Mares. —Having owned 
a stallion for several years, I have observed 
that mares are much surer to prove in foal 
when not suffered to run on red clover, or any 
sappy grass ; if the season is wet, it is best to 
keep them on dry food, until the time the 
horse’s service is past. There is no objection to 
their being used, but they should always be 
used with a great deal of care, never overdone 
with heat or fatigue. When they have gone 
some eight or nine months, they should be kept 
apart from other horses, or at least see that 
that they are not kicked or jammed by them ; 
and when they are within a few weeks of foal¬ 
ing, it is well to turn them on a meadow or 
grass lot that is clear of ditches or abrupt 
streams, as mares are naturally inclined to foal 
near a stream of water; and I have more than 
once known colts to be lost by being dropped 
in, or so near a branch, that they have fallen in 
before they were fully able to walk. 
Posterior Inventive Genius. —Mr. John M. 
Ware, of Seabrook, N. H., has recently ob¬ 
tained a patent for holding cow’s tails still dur¬ 
ing the operation of milking. The machine is 
fastened to one of the animal’s hamstrings, and 
the tail is compressed. Mr. Ware politely 
styles his discovery the Milker’s Protector. His 
claim is as follows : “I claim the Milker’s Pro¬ 
tector, constructed as specified, viz.: a combi¬ 
nation of ham-strings and tail nippers, applied 
together and made to operate as described.” 
This is, in one sense, a step backward in science. 
The Rice Crop. —We are assured on author¬ 
ity entitled to great confidence, that the loss of 
the rice crop on the Savannah and Ogeechee 
rivers, by the storm of the 8th inst., will be fully 
three-fourths; on the Altamaha about one- 
third ; and on the Satilla nothing. On the ri¬ 
vers between Savannah and Charleston, the pro¬ 
bable loss may be estimated about half.— Sa¬ 
vannah Georgian. 
Pulse of Various Animals. —The pulse of 
several of our domestic animals, as given by 
Vattl, in his Veterinary Pathology, is nearly as 
follows: Horse, from 32 to 38 pulsations per 
minute; ox or cow, 25 to 42; ass, 48 to 54; 
sheep. 70 to 70; goat, 72 to 76; dog, 99 to 100; 
cat, 110 to 120; rabbit, 120; guinea pig, 140; 
duck, 135 ; hen, 140. 
The Corn Crop. —The Worcester Spy says 
that the corn crop in Central Massachusetts, 
will be nearly or quite an average one. Pota¬ 
toes will be quite light 
A FAMILY OF SIX. 
The Dayton, Ohio, Gazette—on the authority 
of “ an eye witness, a lady of character,” of 
that city, “ who saw and counted the children, 
and had the mother’s word that they were all 
hers, at a single birth”—gives an account of 
six babies that lately passed in charge of their 
mother, a German woman, through that place, 
to visit their paternal parent in that vicinity, 
who had been taken sick at a place where he 
had been employed at work. 
“ She had with her in a wagon, snugly prop¬ 
ped in a wine basket, the six children. They 
were not much bigger than apple dumplings, 
but seemed to be wide awake and kicking. 
Ttiey were six months old, all boys, and all as 
near of a size as possible, except the runt of 
the party, which is described as being the 
smallest mortal, of its age, ever seen.” 
The same paper goes on to say that while 
there are many well-attested cases of five child¬ 
ren, there is but one case recorded of six at a 
birth, and about this there is much doubt. It 
happened in the day of Dr. Pare, an eminent 
French surgeon and writer of the year 1590. 
The mother, who was the wife of Lord Maide- 
mere, died after delivery, and but one of the 
children lived, succeeding to his father’s title 
and estates. 
There is a legend that a Guelph ancestress to 
the present Queen of England had twelve child¬ 
ren at one birth, but, although credited by the 
faithful, this is, of course, not generally be¬ 
lieved. 
This German woman, with her six simulta¬ 
neous infants, should visit the “baby show” 
which was last year appointed to come off at 
Springfield the present fall. She would, un¬ 
doubtedly, take the highest prize if quantity 
entitle her to it. * * * * * 
In Cuba the goats are employed as wet- 
nurses for infants, evincing much maternal care 
and affection for the “ wee ones” entrusted to 
their charge—running to them when they cry, 
leaping upon the bed to give them sustenance, 
and freely using their horns upon any one that 
molests them. If the same custom were 
adopted in some of our American cities, instead 
of using the milk of diseased and drunken 
cows, fed on the refuse slops of distilleries, the 
bills of mortality would show less deaths 
among our younger population. Lest there 
should be some difficulty in getting the requi¬ 
site number of new milch goats, it would, per¬ 
haps, be safer for them to remain in the more 
healthy locality of their birth, where pure milk 
is to be obtained, till after they are weaned. 
Till then we hope the Dayton Gazette will have 
an eye to this remarkable brood, while we con¬ 
gratulate the parents upon their promising pros¬ 
pects of having a family. 
Napoleon, in reply to Madame de Stael, said 
that she was the greatest woman who was the 
mother of the most children, and he would pro¬ 
bably have conferred on this mother, special 
honors, and upon the father the order of Legion 
of Honor. Sir Isaac Newton, at his birth, was 
so small as to be placed in a pint cup, head and 
shoulders ; and there is no knowing what these 
little ones may become.— jV. Y. Times. 
We can make a better suggestion than goat’s 
milk. Send down East for one of that man’s 
famous Devon cows, which he says, makes a 
pound of butter from every four quarts of 
milk. If the babies could drink such rich milk 
as this, we have no doubt it would expand their 
puny proportions so rapidly that they would 
grow up to be the Brobdiuags instead of Lil¬ 
liputians of the land. 
The Wheel Animalcule. —Ehrenberg, from 
actual observation, found that the rotifera laid 
four eggs a day—that the young, when two days 
old, followed the same law as their parents; 
consequently, a single one in ten days had a 
family of 1,000,000, in eleven days 4,000,000, 
of an active, happy, and energetic race—cease¬ 
less in search of prey, and a famous feast for a 
larger animal. The rotifera delight in the sun¬ 
shine, and when the bright luminary is hidden 
behind the clouds, the animals sink down to the 
bottom of the water, and there remain. When 
their haunts are becoming much evaporated, 
they rise to the top, and give a bright red tint 
to it; but when caught and placed in a jar, their 
beautiful color fades in a few days. Locomotion 
is performed by swimming, the rotary action of 
the crowns of cilia impelling it forwards; in 
other instances it bends its body, then moves 
its tail up towards the head, which it can do 
from having two processes that act as feet, near 
to the tail; it then jerks its head to a further 
distance, again draws up its tail and so proceeds 
on its journey. Another peculiarity they possess 
of drawing in the head and tail until nearly 
globular, from remaining in this condition fixed 
by the sucker; at other times they become a 
complete ball, and can be rolled about by any 
agitation in the water.— The Microscope. 
Machinery vs. Fingers. —There is no danger 
that fingers will ever prove superflous, or stout 
bodies seem unnecessary. Fingers will always 
be handy to reckon on, and muscular power 
will assist in making the effective gestures at a 
stump speech. But for the old uses, they are 
certainly to be in less demand hereafter. We 
have preached, exhorted, written editorials 
against the habit our girls have fallen into, of 
neglecting their knitting and sewing, to spin 
street-yarn and read novels. It has not proved 
of much use. So stockings are knit by looms 
now, and the sewing-machines are constructed 
to sew better, Stronger, more evenly, and much 
steadier, than even our model daughters could. 
Our mail carriers loitered to tell stories by the 
way. Our post-boys stopped to trade horses on 
their route. So the telegraph was invented, 
and the lightning, which has no voice, except a 
kind of thundered Dutch, has the contract; 
and now a man of sedentary habits, at each end 
of a wire that may be any thing but endless, 
will do the work of hundreds of steady post¬ 
boys, and as many $200 horses. Jonathan is 
hard to suit. He grudges the time of his boy— 
who ought to be at school—that has to feed the 
machine which does a hundred men’s work. 
We went a day or two since to see Wilkinson’s 
“Endless Register” — a printing press that 
feeds itself, cuts the sheets as they roll, lays 
them straight when printed, and carries them 
away. The next step will be to build an auto¬ 
maton type setter—that will follow copy to a 
dot. Then a Society for the Diffusion of Use¬ 
ful Knowledge must be sure to keep on hand a 
supply of cheap books, for the use of the poor 
lad, who has the dull job of winding up the 
Automaton Type Setter, and seeing that the 
printing press does not strike off extras unor¬ 
dered, that the boy may improve his mind dur¬ 
ing the long leisure of his appointed ten hours 
labor.— M. Y. Times. 
S. M. Baker, a Pickaway farmer, has owned 
during the past year, upwards of three thousand 
cattle; his capital actively employed in this bu¬ 
siness being something over $150,000,— Cincin¬ 
nati Commercial. 
England Learning from America.—A cor- 
respondcn of the Boston Chronicle says that 
the Massachusetts Arms Company, at Chicopee 
Falls, are now constructing for the British gov¬ 
ernment a complete set of machinery for doing 
gun work. The machines are modelled from 
those at the arsenel in Springfield, which every 
one who has visited there has seen to their as¬ 
tonishment and admiration. 
'The number of hogs assessed in Kentucky 
this year is 1,515,690, being an increase over 
last year of 185,307 head. 
