104 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
A Y K E S ! \Y AI E R E L E V A T 0 R . 
An apparatus adapted to wells or resor- 
voirs, by which the various farm animals 
will draw their own water at such times and 
in such quantities as may be needed, is a 
thing much to be desired, and several at¬ 
tempts have been made to meet this want. 
We have until recently seen no one, how¬ 
ever, which did not appear to have radical 
defects. An advertisement in our March 
number called our attention to a recent in¬ 
vention of Mr. Jared A. Ayres, a teacher in 
the Institute for Deaf Mutes in Hartford, 
Conn., and we have carefully examined a 
working model with much satisfaction. We 
present herewith an engraving which will 
show its form and mode of action : 
The cow approaching the well depresses 
a platform which is attached by a small pul¬ 
ley to the axle of the large wheel A, turn¬ 
ing it round and drawing up the bucket B. 
The bucket is guided by. the small rods r r. 
The coiled spring a checks the sudden ele¬ 
vation of the bucket as it reaches the top. 
By giving a greater or less fall to the plat¬ 
form, or increasing or diminishing the differ¬ 
ence between the large and small pulleys 
upon the same axle, the apparatus can be 
adapted to deep or shallow wells. A valve 
to the spout is opened by a little lever 
striking against the cross piece D. A valve 
in the bottom of the bucket admits the water 
from beneath as the bucket descends. One 
valuable peculiarity of this bucket is an ar¬ 
rangement by which the bucket is emptied 
of a part of its contents, proportioned to the 
weight of the animal pressing upon the plat¬ 
form, so that while a single sheep, for ex¬ 
ample, will raise say a quart, or two quarts 
of water, as may be desired, an animal 
weighing ten times as much will raise ten or 
twenty quarts. We have not space to note 
several other particulars, such as the ar¬ 
rangements to prevent any interference 
get its botanical name, and do not know that 
it is called by any other than cockle from 
Maine to Texas ) The delay necessary to 
take up these nine roots may have been two 
minutes. The whole time occupied in cross¬ 
ing the field and pulling the roots certainly 
did not exceed nine minutes. Query. Would 
not the proprietor of that field—who, by-the- 
way, assured us that it was “ very clean of 
foul stuff”—find it time well laid out to send 
a man or boy over the whole wheat-plot to 
pull up all the cockle roots, which are very 
easily seen at this season 1 ? We are sure it 
would. We have followed the plan from 
boyhood. When less than twelve years old, 
one part of our Spring work was to go over 
twenty-five to fifty acres of wheat and pull 
up all the cockle. As we sowed clean seed, 
three to four acres a day was not considered 
a hard task. Is it not worth a month’s work 
of a boy to clear fifty acres of this pest? 
But at the same time with the cockle pull¬ 
ing, we carried a two-inch chisel fitted with 
a long handle, with which we dug up all the 
red dock roots we could find, and also any 
stray thistles and mulleins that showed 
their heads. With the narrow blade, it is 
easy to take out the deep roots of these 
plants without greatly disturbing the adja¬ 
cent wheat roots. Wheat-growers, try this 
cheap method of clearing your fields, and 
you will soon find a decided improvement 
i in the marketable quality of your grain. 
Nothing lessens the value of wheat more 
than those black little seeds of the cockle 
plant. Two or three successive weedmgs 
of the above kind will nearly eradicate this 
pest. But a word for the boys. Pulling 
cockle, like pulling potato vines, is hard on 
the back, though it operates in time better 
than any “strengthening plaster.” Make 
the work for the boys as light as may be, 
j and make it attractive. Offer the boys a 
premium of twenty-five cents per acre for 
entirely eradicating this pest, and charge 
| them six cents for each plant found growing 
| at harvest time, and our word for it, you will 
find the work well and cheaply done. We 
speak from experience. 
— —————- 
DEAR SUGARS, 
Every one is cognizant of the fact that 
sweetening of all kinds is enormously dear, 
so much so as to become almost a luxury. 
A large dealer in rhubarb, or Pie-plant, in¬ 
forms us that he is preparing for greatly di¬ 
minished sales this season, because people 
cannot afford to buy the necessary swe< t- 
ening for this plant. Fortunately the season 
has been highly favorable for making maple 
sugar in most parts of the country, and it is 
estimated that double the average quantity 
has been manufactured this year. But tvtn 
tnis will afford but a partial relief, and the 
prospects ahead are little better, as the se¬ 
vere frosts the past month have materially 
diminished the prospects of the sugar crop 
at the South. We can but regret that the 
new Chinese Sugar Cane plant has not had 
one season more of trial. Were we fully 
confident of its success, we should urge its 
immediate general cultivation on a large 
scale. But this we cannot do. As it is, 
from frost. We commend the apparatus to 
the attention of our readers. Further in¬ 
formation and full particulars may be ob¬ 
tained by addressing the proprietor, Henry 
A. Dyer, Esq., at Hartford, Conn., as noted 
in our advertising columns. 
ANOTHER .JOB IN THE WHEAT FIELDS. 
We are often tempted to head each page 
of our pa-per with the old-fashioned but ex¬ 
pressive adage: “A stitch in time saves 
nine”—sometimes ninety nine. This morn¬ 
ing (April 13), in a “country ramble,” we 
had occasion to cross a wheat-field, and in¬ 
stinctively, or perhaps from force of early 
habit, we pulled up and carried with us nine 
separate bunches or roots of “cockle,” as 
we have been accustomed to call it. (We for- 
