92 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Loss of “ Thirdly.” —Rev. Mr.-, min¬ 
ister of-, had the custom of writing the 
heads of his dicourse on small slips of paper, 
which he placed on the Bible before him, to 
be used in succession. One day, when he 
was explaining the second head, he got a lit¬ 
tle warm, and came down with such a thump 
upon the Bible with his hand that the ensu¬ 
ing slip fell over the edge of the pulpit, 
though unperceived by himself. On reach¬ 
ing the end of the second head, he looked 
down for the third slip, but alas ! it was not 
to bo found. “ Thirdly,” he cried, looking 
around with great anxiety. After a little 
pause, “ Thirdly,” again he exclaimed, but no 
Thirdly appeared. “ Thirdly, I say my 
brethren,” pursued the bewildered clergyman, 
but not another word could he utter. At 
this point, where the congregation were 
partly sympathizing with his distress, and 
partly rejoicing at such a decisive instance 
of the impropriety of using notes in preach¬ 
ing, which had always been an unpopular 
thing in the Scotch clergy, and old woman 
rose up and thus addressed the preacher :— 
“ If I’m not mistaken, sir, I saw Thirdly fly 
out of the east window a quarter of an hour 
syne.” It is impossible for any but a Scotch¬ 
man to concieve how much this account of 
the loss of thirdly was relished by that part 
of the congregation which condemned the 
use of notes.— Chumbers's Scottish Books. 
Profane Language. —It is related of Dr. 
Scudder, that on his return from his mission 
in India, after a long absence, he was stand¬ 
ing on the deck of a steamer, with his son, a 
youth, when he heard a gentleman using loud 
and profane language. “ See, friend,” said 
the doctor, accosting the swearer, “ this boy 
—my son—was born and brought up in a 
heathen country, and a land of pagan idolatry ; 
but in all his life he never heard a man blas¬ 
pheme his Maker until now.” The man 
colored, blurted out a sort of an apology and 
moved away, looking not a little ashamed 
of himself. If there is any custom more 
silly than duelling, it is that of using profane 
language ; but it is as common as lying, and 
there is hardly a dirty-nosed urchin in the 
street that will not swear as bravely as any 
“gentleman” that walks Broadway. 
A Trap for a Troublesome Tongue.— 
Sheridan was one day very much annoyed by 
a fellow member of the House of Commons, 
who kept crying out every few minutes, 
“ hear ! hear!” During the debate he took 
occasion to describe a political contemporary 
that wished to play the rogue, but had only 
sense enough to play the fool. “ Where,” 
exclaimed he with great emphasis, “ where 
shall we find a more foolish knave or more 
knavish fool than he 1” “ Hear! hear !” 
was shouted by the troublesome member. 
Sheridan turned round and thanking him for 
the prompt information, sat down amid a roar 
of laughter. 
Not Bad. —“ Is a Man and his wife both 
one ?” asked the wife of a certain gentleman 
in a state of stupification, as she was hold¬ 
ing his aching head in both hands. “ Yes, I 
suppose so,” was the reply.—“ Well, then,” 
said she, “ I came home drunk last night, 
and ought to be ashamed of myself.” This 
backhanded rebuke from a long-suffering and 
affectionate wife effectually cured him of his 
drinking propensity. 
Too Lazy to Stop. —There was once a 
clergyman in New-Hampshire, noted for his 
long sermons and indolent habits. 
“ How is it,” said a man to his neighbor, 
“ that Parson-, the laziest man living, 
writes these interminable sermons ?” 
“ Why,” said the other, “ he probably gets 
to writing and is too lazy to stop.” 
THE EMU FOWL. 
1 have not seen noticed in the pages of the 
Poultry Chronicle a variety of fowl, which, if 
it can not demand our admiration for its 
beauty, at least deserves our attention as 
being one of the many wonderful varieties 
which the late poultry mania has brought to 
light; I mean the fowl to which fanciers 
have given the name of the Emu Fowl. Of 
this variety, I believe, only a few exist in 
England, and therefore, to some of your 
readers, it may not be uninteresting to hear 
something about them. Were it not that I 
belive they are generally recognized as a 
distinct breed, my own experience, so far as 
it goes, would rather lead me to believe that 
they are only a sort of a class of freaks of 
Nature—if Nature can be said to have any 
rule in the production of her monstrosities. 
In one of the exhibitions in Baker-street, 
which I attended last year, I remember see¬ 
ing one solitary specimen of this variety, 
and at the last Birmingham Show, there was 
a pen of them exhibited, I think, by Mr. 
Baily, of Mount-street; but excepting these, 
and the one specimen in my own yard, of 
which I mean to speak, I do not remember 
ever to have seen any. These creatures are 
covered all over with a sort of silk, of a light 
dusty or very light red color, and have no 
feathers except in their wings, where they 
have a few things that look like worn-out 
quills. They have no tails, are not good 
flyers, and the hens (mv experience does 
not extend to cocks) weigh about five lbs. 
They have not the black skin of the Silk 
fowl 
And now I will give you an account of the 
way in which the specimen of which I write 
came into my possession. In the Spring of 
1851, I had given me six Cochin Chinese 
eggs, from a yard where none other than 
Cochin China fowls were kept, excepting, 
perhaps, one or two common hens ; but, 
however, there were only Cochin cocks, and 
the eggs which were given me were laid 
by Cochin hens. I took the six home with 
me, and succeeded in hatching three chicks. 
Two turned out very handsome Cochin 
cocks, the smallest of which weighed 10 lbs. 
last summer; and the third egg turned out, 
to all appearance, a thorough-bred Emu hen, 
and, in fact, I have no hesitation in saying, 
she is as like those exhibited in Birmingham 
as one hen can be like another. I kept her 
(and, indeed, have her now), and from her 
eggs hatched several chicks, by one of these 
cocks that had been hatched from the origin¬ 
al six eggs, thinking that if there was some 
taint of Emu in the blood of my friend’s 
fowls, this cross might perhaps produce 
some more of these silky Emu fowls ; but 
such has never been the case. They were 
always the sort of brute you would imagine 
would be the consequence of a cross be¬ 
tween an Emu hen and a Cochin cock ; but, 
at the same time, my Emu hen, while differ¬ 
ing entirely in appearance from her brothers, 
and, in fact, all her relatives, as far as 1 
know them, possesses all the moral and do¬ 
mestic traits of a Cochin—the same gentle 
tractubility of temper, the same proneness to 
sitting, the same fecundity in laying eggs. 
[Poultry Chronicle. 
This is the same kind of fowls as we kept 
when a boy, forty years ago. They came 
from China, and were called the Merino 
fowl—why this designation we have never 
learned. They bred true and well together; 
but were so tender, owing to the deficiency 
of feathers, that they would often freeze to 
death in winter. They would do well in a 
climate six degrees south of us. 
We do not believe they are a “ freak of 
nature,” or that they are “ sports” from the 
Cochin China, otherwise they would not 
have a breed so true to themselves ; that is, 
admitting that we are not mistaken in sup¬ 
posing the old Merino, the same as the 
modern Emu Fowl. 
MACHINERY IN FARMING. 
It is not enough that farmers avail 
themselves of all the advantages which 
chemistry affords in its application to their 
art; it is not enough that they learn how to 
save as much as possible of the manures 
made on their premises, and the best meth 
ods of applying these and also purchased 
specific manures; it is not enough that they 
know at what seasons and to what depths 
their soils should be cultivated. They must 
perform as many of the operations of farm¬ 
ing by machinery, as machinery can be made 
to perform to advantage. 
There is no other way in which agricul¬ 
ture can keep pace in respectability, pleasure 
and profit, with other arts. Without this 
expedient it will be outstripped by them, and 
sink steadily in comparative rank. 
By machinery, as we use the word here, 
we mean all the mechanical contrivances 
which can be substituted for manual labor, 
and combined with manual labor so as great¬ 
ly to increase its productiveness. 
And the policy which we recommend in¬ 
cludes also animal labor, and as a more pow¬ 
erful cooperator with it. 
So far as a horse or an ox can be made to 
do the work of five men, the horse or the ox 
earns the net product of five men’s labor for 
the employer. If one man cultivates as 
much corn, and cultivates it well, with one 
horse, attached to a cultivator, as his neigh¬ 
bor cultivates with ten hoes in the hands of 
ten men, it is easy to see which of the two is 
traveling the fastest on the road to wealth. 
So in cutting grass, in planting and har¬ 
vesting grain, in shelling corn, and in various 
other operations of the farm, machines can 
do the work for a small per centage of the 
cost of manual labor.— M'Makings Courier. 
Transplanting Forest Trees. —Mr. Geo. 
Jaques, of Worcester, Mass., writes to 
Hovey's Magazine, as follows: The accom¬ 
panying shellbarks (Hickory nuts)—well ri¬ 
pened, as you will find them—grew this sea¬ 
son upon a tree which my brother and 
myself transplanted twenty-one months ago, 
i. e., in January, 1851. The tree was moved, 
at the same time with three others, a dis¬ 
tance of two miles, by what is called the 
frozen-ball method of transplanting. It is 
now in a fine healthy condition, and, with the 
others—all of which are over thirty feet, and 
one of them forty feet, in hight—serves at 
once for ornament and shade. Upon our 
new place, they produce a fine effect in tak¬ 
ing off and relieving the inevitable rawness 
of a recent settlement. 
A simple statement of these facts may 
encourage others to do likewise. Knowing 
the great difficulty of transplanting our hard- 
wooded forest trees, particularly the oak and 
several species of the hickory, you will con¬ 
cede that our experiment has been eminent¬ 
ly successful. The expense of transplanting 
did not exceed twelve dollars per tree. 
Good Times for the Farmers. —The other 
day one of our Indiana farmers, living a 
few miles west of Jeffersonville, took to 
that market four bushels of sweet potatoes 
—sold them for two dollars a bushel ($8 in 
all); with five dollars, entered 40 acres of 
fail government land ; and tying up the bal¬ 
ance in his leather purse, journeyed home¬ 
ward, contented and happy. 
[Indianapolis Sentinel. 
