250 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
flour are already engaged. She is loaded and 
unloaded by means of a steam engine stationed 
upon the deck, which can be removed into a 
huge long boat, constructed to be used as a pro¬ 
peller in the Tropics, by which the Great Repub¬ 
lic will be towed in calms. The engine is also 
expected to be used in hoisting sails. This is a 
new step in the industry of the world. On land 
we have a steam engine that digs and loads; it 
is called, in compliment to the most effective 
worker with a spade, (the Irishman,) a “ Steam 
Paddy.” We drill for blasting, by steam. Tun¬ 
nels also are made with steam engines. To these 
valuable instruments of labor, may now be ad¬ 
ded the “ Steam Tar,” which works with great 
efficiency, and will never “ strike” for an increase 
of wages. 
The Great Republic is a great curiosity, and 
should be visited by those who have the oppor¬ 
tunity to do so. She will remain in port about 
a fortnight. It will cost those who go on board 
a shilling, which will be devoted to some chari¬ 
table purpose. A large sum was realized from 
that source in Boston, end doubtless will be 
here. 
Our principal object in writing this notice, is 
to announce that about forty boys will be taken 
out on the voyage, if those of a proper charac¬ 
ter shall offer. About fifteen have already been 
engaged, and they are cheerfully at work on 
board the vessel. Among them is a young Geor¬ 
gian just out of college, who has a plantation 
in his native State. A son of Commodore 
Gregory has also enlisted in the service. A 
library of about 500 volumes has been procured 
for their use on board. They will be under the 
direction of a teacher, and will have apartments 
by themselves, and thus avoid the contaminating 
influences of the forward cabin. Pay, to the 
extent of six or eight dollars per month will be 
allowed, enough to furnish clothing. None un¬ 
der about sixteen years of age will be taken. It 
seems to us a good oportunity to learn the art 
of seamanship. After reaching Liverpool, the 
Great Republic will sail for Australia, the new 
gold region of England. She will probably, be¬ 
fore reaching home, make a voyage around the 
Globe. 
The Great Republic is of 4,558 tons register, 
and full 6,000 tons’ stowage capacity, and the 
owner has built her entirely upon his own ac¬ 
count, and will sail her too. She is 825 feet 
long 53 feet wide, and her whole depth is 39 
feet. 
She has 4 complete decks. The height be¬ 
tween the upper and spar decks is 7 feet, and 
between each of the others, 8 feet. 
The ship has 4 masts, the after one named 
the spanker mast, which is of a single spar; the 
others are built of hard pine, the parts doweled 
together, bolted and hooped over all with iron. 
The bowsprit is also built and hooped in the 
same style, and the topmasts and jib-booms are of 
hard pine. She has Forbes’s rig, and is square 
rigged on the fore, main, and mizen-masts, and 
fore-and-aft rigged on the spanker mast. The 
main yard is 120 feet square, and the lower 
maintopsail yard 92 feet. Excepting these, all 
the other yards above are alike on the fore and 
main masts, and the lower foretopsail yard is 
of the same dimensions as the crossjack yard, 
and all the yards above are alike on both masts. 
Potato Planter. —Alex. Anderson, of Mark¬ 
ham, C. W., has invented an improved potato 
planter. His machine has an endless apron at 
the bottom of a hopper, which is provided with 
a series of apertures, which receive the potatoes 
and carry them to the discharge spout, through 
which they fall into the furrow at equal dis¬ 
tances apart—these apertures also conveying 
those potatoes which are too large for seed, to a 
knife at the bottom of the hopper, where they 
are cut into pieces of suitable size. The inven¬ 
tor has applied for a patent. — Scientific Ameri¬ 
can. 
Improved Harrow. — W. B. & G. M. Ramsay, 
of South Strabane, Pa., has taken measures to 
secure a patent upon an improved harrow, the 
nature of which consists in constructing a har¬ 
row of three separate parts or squares, and so 
arranging them, that one of their diagonal lines 
will run parallel to the line of travel, and the 
other transversely thereto, so that greater 
breadth of sweep is secured than with a harrow 
composed and jointed, as is common in these 
implements. One of these harrows is on exhi¬ 
bition at the Crystal Palace, and has attracted 
considerable attention. G. M. Ramsay, the as¬ 
signee, is at present residing in this city.— Ibid. 
-o -- 
THE AGES OF ANIMALS. 
Amongst domestic animals the age may be 
judged of by the presence, absence, or change 
of certain organs in the body. The age of the 
horse is known principally by the appearance 
of the incision teeth, or, as they are technically 
called, the nippers. In cattle with horns, the 
age is indicated more readily by the growth of 
these instruments than by the detrition and suc¬ 
cession of the teeth. The deer kind, which shed 
their horns annually, and in which, with the 
single exception of the reindeer, they are con¬ 
fined to the male sex, have them at first in the 
form of simple prickets without any branches 
or antlers; but each succeeding year of their 
lives adds one or more branches, according to 
the species, up to a certain fixed period, beyond 
which the age of the animal can only be guessed 
at from the size of the horns and the thickness 
of the burr or knob at their roots, which con¬ 
nects them with the skull. The horns of oxen, 
sheep, goats and antelopes, which are hollow 
and permanent, are of a very different form, and 
grow in a different manner from those of the 
deer kind. These, as is well known, consist of 
a hollow sheath of horn, which covers a bony 
core or process of the skull, and grows from the 
root, where it receives each year an additional 
knob or ring; the number of which is a sure in¬ 
dication of the animal’s age. The growth of the 
horns in these animals is by no means uniform 
through the whole year; but the increase, at 
least in temperate climates, takes place in Spring, 
after which there is no further addition till the 
following season. In the cow kind the horns 
appear to grow uniformly during the first three 
years of the animal’s life ; consequently, up to 
that age they are perfectly smooth, and without 
wrinkles, but afterwards, each succeeding year 
adds a ring to the root of the horn, so that the 
age is determined by allowing three years for 
the point or smooth part of the horn, and one 
for each of the rings. In sheep and goats the 
smooth or top part counts but for one [year, as 
the horns of these animals show their first knob 
or ring in the second year of their age ; in the 
antelopes they probably follow the same rule, 
though we have very little knowledge of their 
growth and development in these animals. 
There are very few instances in which the age 
of animals belonging to other classes can be de¬ 
termined by any general rules. In birds it may 
be sometimes done by observing the form and 
wear of the bill; and some pretend to distinguish 
the age of fishes by the appearance of their 
scales, but their methods are founded on mere 
hypothesis, and entitled to no confidence. — Eng¬ 
lish Encyclopedia. 
- 0 © ©- - 
THE WORLD’S FAIR FAT CATTLE. 
Nine of the eleven head of fat cattle exhibited 
last summer in Forty-second st., near the Crystal 
Palace, were bought by James Irving, of Wash¬ 
ington market, for $1,900, and butchered last 
week, with the following results as to weights : 
No. 1, which he named after Gen. Wm. H. 
Angel, of Jefferson County, N. Y., who is the 
largest cattle feeder in the State, weighed, dress¬ 
ed, 2,178 lbs. This, we believe, is four pounds 
heavier than the great ox Washington, killed six 
years since. The Pennsylvania ox weighed 
1,388 lbs. 
No. 2, named after Capt. Charles Walter, of 
Cleveland. O., a son of the largest man in this 
State, resident in Jefferson County, weighed 
2,066 lbs. 
No. 3, which he named after George Buck, of 
this City, weighed 2,024 lbs. 
No. 4, named after Gardner T. White, son of 
“ Old Tom,” known throughout the country as a 
cattle drover, weighed 1,930 lbs. This was the 
“ Poughkeepsie Steer,” so much and so justly 
admired for his great beauty of form and fat¬ 
ness. 
No. 5, named in honor of Silas Wright, weigh¬ 
ed 1,860 lbs. 
No. 6, named George W. Jenkins, weighed 
2,008 lbs. 
Nos. 7 and 8, ‘ the Twins” weighed 1,800 and 
1,880—3,680 lbs. 
“The Old Cow”—the fattest beef ever butch¬ 
ered in this City, dressed 1,460 pounds. She 
was nineteen years old, and mother of thirteen 
calves. This beef was a sight upon the stall and 
attracted a great deal of curiosity. The lean 
parts were as tender as a young heifer, but the 
meat was generally too fat for human food. The 
average weight of the beef of these nine cattle 
was 1,915 pounds. Their description we have 
heretofore given. The cow was Durham, and 
the others grades of that stock. 
Three other cattle, exhibited in Thirty-ninth 
st., called the “ Stoddard Calves,” we have also 
described heretofore. Thej r were named Supe¬ 
rior, Erie, and Niagara; were grade Durhams of 
perhaps quarter blood, raised in Erie County, 
and aged six, seven, and eight years—all from 
one cow. They were purchased by Knapp & 
Ryno, of Washington Market, for somewhere in 
the neighborhood of $1,000. Niagara died a few 
days since of excessive fatness. His carcass 
yielded 1,044 pounds of rough tallow. 
Superior and Erie were butchered, and the 
meat sold on Saturday, at 50 and 75 cts. a pound 
in Washington Market. The beef of the first 
weighed 2,127 lbs, and the rough tallow 262 lbs. 
The other beef weighed 1,934 lbs., and tallow 
350 lbs. The meat was beautifully marbled and 
fine grained and tender. Upon the same stall 
was a veal from Dover Plains, Dutchess County, 
which weighed 502 lbs. The calf, alive, weighed 
688 lbs., and was six days over six months old. 
He cost them $70. 
There were a great many other fat beeves 
butchered for Christmas, and it was a general 
remark of the old marketmen, that they had 
never seen so much good meat in market at one 
time. There was one porker in Washington 
Market which weighed over 1,000 lbs.; but the 
greatest of all the sights of eatables was in the 
poultry line. It is not probably exaggerating to 
say that one man had ten wagon-loads on, un¬ 
der and over his stall at one time. The crowd 
of purchasers was such all the morning at Wash¬ 
ington Market as to indicate most forcibly the 
necessity of better accommodations.— Tribune 
of Dec. 26. 
The Ship-Worm. —Destructive as the ship- 
worm unquestionably is, nevertheless its ser¬ 
vices could ill be dispensed with; though a dev¬ 
astator of ships and piers, it is also a protector 
of both; for were the fragments of wreck and 
masses of stray timber, that would choke har¬ 
bors and clog the waves, permitted to remain 
undestroyed, the loss of life and injuries to pro¬ 
perty that would result would far exceed all the 
damages done and danger caused by the teredo. 
This active shell-fish is one of the police of Nep¬ 
tune—a scavenger and clearer of the sea. It at¬ 
tacks every stray mass of floating or sunken 
timber with which it comes in contact, and soon 
reduces it to harmlessness and dust. For one 
ship sunk by it a hundred are really saved; and 
whilst we deprecate the mischief and distress of 
which it has been the unconscious cause, we are 
bound to acknowledge that without its opera¬ 
tions, there would be infinitely more treasure 
buried in the abysses of the deep, and more ven¬ 
turous mariners doomed to watery graves.— 
Westminster Revicio. 
Secure the approbation of the aged and you 
will enjoy the confidence of the young. 
