130 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Ai'RIL, 
hole, just large enough to admit the bird; this 
js always placed on the south-west side of the 
nest. The length of the bird is five inches. 
The Basking Shark.—The “Great Sea- 
; s Monster.” 
% 
, BY PROFESSOR 8. F. BAIRD. 
[Some mouths ago, one of the illustrated 
weekly papers had an engraving of a “ Sea- 
Monster,” with a sensational account of its cap¬ 
ture. It was stated that the animal had been 
examined by Professor Baird, of the Smithso¬ 
nian Institution, at Washington, and that he and 
other naturalists regarded it as something here¬ 
tofore unknown. The skin of the animal is 
now in a New York museum, and large posters 
about the streets represent, in brilliant colors, 
a terrific combat between the monster and its 
captors. Suspecting the “fishiness” of the affair, 
we asked Prof. Baird to give an account of 
the animal, which he does, as follows. —Eds.] 
I take much pleasure in complying with your 
request for some information concerning a 
‘wonderful sea-monster,’now on exhibition in 
one of the museums of New York, which it is 
stated was captured near Eastport, Maine, last 
summer, after a most desperate resistance, dur¬ 
ing which it used certain ‘ legs’ to propel itself 
along the flats. As the published accounts con¬ 
nect my name with the animal, as having seen 
it last summer, and being then unable to assign 
it a place among the known members of the 
animal kingdom, you think that I may perhaps 
be able to do so now for the benefit of your 
numerous readers. 
To answer your inquiries in the fewest possi¬ 
ble words, I will therefore say that the beast is 
the common Basking Shark, (as I told the 
showman when 1 saw it) well known to every 
sea-faring man; that in its preparation it is 
distorted and changed from its true shape; and 
that the ‘legs’ are the so-called ‘claspers,’ 
found in all male sharks, large and small, and 
which are flabby appendages to the reproduc¬ 
tive organs. In their ordinary state, they are 
club-shaped, ending in a rather blunt point. 
When I saw the animal at Calais, last summer, 
they were not materially altered from their 
natural shape, but I have been informed that 
they have been ingeniously manipulated so as 
to give them the appearance of toes, perhaps 
with claws, and bent to represent the joints of 
limbs. There is, however, no bone, or joint, 
or division of any kind in them, and they are 
about as well adapted to aid in progression as 
are the teats of a cow. 
This Basking Shark, Selache, or Cetorhinus 
maximus of naturalist's, is abundant in the 
North Atlantic, and is frequently captured for 
the oil contained in its liver. It has the habit 
of lying or‘basking’ sluggishly on the surface 
of the water, probably while asleep, and will 
then allow boats to come very close to it. It 
forms an exception to our preconceived ideas 
of a large shark, being perfectly inoffensive, 
never attacking'man; and, in fact, it is be¬ 
lieved to subsist on sea-weeds and minute ma¬ 
rine animals. The teeth are very small, scarcely 
larger than those of a codfish. The eyes are 
small, and situated further forward than in 
other sharks. The gill openings are very large, 
and the intestines are much convoluted. 
In size, this shark is among the ‘ monsters of 
the deep;’ a length of thirty to nearly forty 
feet being frequently attained, with a propor¬ 
tional thickness. There is another shark found 
in the southern seas, a Carcharodon, still larger, 
however, and really a ‘ man-eater.’ 
The Basking Shark is figured and described 
in Storer’s Fishes of Massachusetts, Dekay’s 
Fishes of New York, etc., although many of 
the illustrations are incorrect, from having been 
drawn from stuffed specimens. I send j’-ou a 
figure, taken from a memoir of Dc Blainville, 
which is, perhaps, as good a representation of 
the true animal as can bo now found. You 
will observe, probably, that it bears but little 
resemblance to the ‘Utopia Lake and Passa- 
maquoddy Bay Great Sea-Monster.’ ” 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 64. 
It is not pleasant walking about a farm in the 
spring of the year, when the first three or four 
inches of surface soil is thawed out, and while 
the ground beneath is still frozen solid. But to 
me there is a fascination about it that is hard to 
resist, and few days pass that I do not take a 
narrow, long-handled draining-scoop and wan¬ 
der all over the farm, forgetting that there are 
such tiresome people in the world as printers 
and editors, or that life has any other duty but to 
get water off the land. With rubber boots and 
water-proof coat, the harder it rains the greater 
the pleasure. I like to see the water pour out 
of the pipes, clear as crystal, while that in the 
open ditches is as muddy as the Missouri River. 
This clear water must have left its fertilizing 
matter in the soil, and the plants next summer 
will get the benefit. 
At this season, when the ground is frozen un¬ 
derneath, but when we have had more or less 
thawing weather, it is curious to observe the 
effect of underdrains. It would seem impossi¬ 
ble for the water to soak through the frozen 
earth. But it certainly manages to do so, and 
that quite rapidly. We are digging drains now, 
and as there is considerable water in the deep 
furrows which we plowed out last fall, where 
the drains were to be cut, the men try to dam it 
up, but find it almost impossible to do so. It 
gets through or underneath the frozen soil on 
each side of the dam. 
Another fact is worth observing. The soil 
above an underdrain is completely thawed out, 
while the soil on each side is frozen solid. Willi 
a narrow spade, or a light crow-bar, I could 
trace every drain on the farm. I supposed, at 
first, that the soil was thawed by the water 
soaking through to the drain underneath. But 
this is not the true explanation of the fact; for 
I find that in a case where, three years ago, I 
dug a ditch three fc<*t deep, intending to tile it, 
but from insufficiency of fall abandoned the 
undertaking and filled up the ditch, the soil is 
thawed out just the same as where there are 
tiles underneath. It would seem, therefore, 
that the effect is due simply to the fact, that the 
soil has been stirred two or three feet deep. 
Whether this soil is frozen during the winter, I 
do not know, but it seems more probable that 
it does not freeze than that it should thaw out 
earlier in spring. Both these fields, where I 
have observed these effects, have been under 
the plow more or less since the drains were 
laid, three, four, and five years ago. It 
seems clear that deep tilled land is warmer in 
winter than land plowed only six or seven 
inches deep. The fact is important to the 
gardener, if not to the farmer. Apparently, a 
rather heavy garden soil, well drained and sub- 
soiled, or trenched two or three feet deep, could 
be planted earlier than a similar soil worked 
only on the surface. It would seem, too, that 
trees, shrubs, and vines, on such deeply stirred 
land, would not suffer as much from severe frost. 
One of the most convenient methods of re¬ 
viving chilled lambs or little pigs is, to bury 
them up to their heads in a barrel of steamed 
chaffed hay or straw. It is comparatively dry, 
and retains the heat for a long time. A few 
bags of steamed chaff or cut straw placed along 
the bag, and between the legs of a sick cow, as 
she lies prostrate, will often do more good than 
medicine. It is generally well, however, to give 
a little medicine of some kind, and let it be un¬ 
derstood that the heat is necessary to its effect. 
In this way, the men can be induced to apply 
the steamed chaff more hopefully and steadily. 
Few men have any faith in such a simple thing as 
rubbing the legs of a sick horse, or of applying 
heat to the body. I have not tried it, but I pre¬ 
sume where there is no steamer, it would an¬ 
swer nearly as well to pour a pailful of boiling 
water over the chaff. But it would be necessary 
to keep a good supply of hot water at hand, 
| as it is desirable to apply the bags of hot chaff 
I for several hours, or until the animal gets better. 
j “Why do you object,” writes an old farmer, 
“ to the practice of putting the lines round the 
shoulders in plowing?” Because a skillful 
plowman, with well-trained horses, can get 
along quite as well with the lines on the liand- 
| les of the plow; and an awkward plowman 
; ought not to be trusted with so much power, 
j He will attribute his own want of skill to the 
.perversity of the horses, and will vent his anger 
in jerks and yells, that will soon spoil the best 
j team in the world.—Let a skillful man take a 
j pair of well-trained carriage horses, that will 
! answer to the slightest movement of the reins, 
| and which you can guide to an inch, or turn 
■ in a moment, or stop on the instant. Pro¬ 
vide him with a properly adjusted steel plow 
that, in ordinary soils, requires a draft of 
only 350 to 400 pounds. The horses can walk 
along steadily with such a plow, and do a fail- 
day’s work with ease. On the other hand, let 
these same horses be placed in the hands of a 
man who anticipates trouble, and who, being a 
coward, says he “ain’t afraid of them;” allow 
him to tie the lines tightly round his body, and 
if the horses, being unused to the work, are a 
little awkward at first, he will begin to pull and 
jerk before they get fairly started. They do not 
know what to make of such treatment. They 
are commanded to go, but at the same time (lie 
man behind braces himself with his feet on the 
ground, and his hands on the plow, to hold 
them back. They must pull four hundred 
pounds bj r the collars, and one hundred pounds 
or more by the bits. If anything goes wrong, 
they are jerked back with all the force the man 
can exert, say two hundred and fifty to three 
hundred pounds, and if he is 'aery mad, perhaps 
five hundred pounds. 'When a man holds tight 
lines in driving a carriage, there is no loss of 
power, because what is pulled by the bits re¬ 
duces the draft on the collars. But in plowing, 
all that the horses pull by the bits is a total 
loss. It is not only a loss of power, but it 
frets the horses, and they cannot do nearly as 
much work as if they had their heads at liberty. 
A few weeks of such treatment will utterly 
spoil a pair of carriage horses. Their necks be¬ 
come as stiff and unyielding as a post, and they 
will no longer answer to the reins. I keep 
eight horses, and there is not one of them that 
can be driven in a carriage with any degree of 
pleasure. They have ail been spoiled by this 
