310 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[August, 
for wheat or Indian com, but it makes a pleasant 
change, and some invalids find it easier of digestion, 
and more nutritious than any preparation of either 
of these grains. 
Eating Fruit. 
We hardly know how to account for the popular 
impression that still prevails in many rural districts, 
that the free use of fruit is unfriendly to health. 
It has much to do with the scarcity of fruit gar¬ 
dens and orchards in the country. As a matter of 
fact, cities and villages are much better supplied 
with fruit the year round, than the surrounding 
country. There are hundreds of farms, even in the 
oldest parts of the land, where there is no orchard, 
and the only fruit is gathered from a few seedling 
apple trees grown in the fence-comers. The wants 
of cities are supplied not so much from the proper 
farming districts, as from a few men in their sub¬ 
urbs, who make a business of growing fruit for 
market. The farmers who raise a good variety of 
small fruits for the supply of their own families, 
are still the exception. The villager, with his 
quarter or half-acre lot, will have his patch of 
strawberries, his row of currants and raspberries, 
his grape vines and pear trees, and talk intelligent¬ 
ly of the varieties of these fruits. His table is well 
supplied with these luxuries for at least half of the 
year. But there is a lamentable dearth of good 
fruit upon the farm from the want of conviction 
that it pays. It does pay in personal comfort and 
health, if in nothing else. The medical faculty will 
bear testimony to the good influence of ripe fruit 
upon the animal economy. They regulate the 
system better than anything else, and forestall 
many of the diseases to which we are liable in the 
summer and fall. A quaint old gentleman of our 
acquaintance often remarks, that apples are the on¬ 
ly pills he takes. He takes these every day in the 
year, when they can be found in the market, and 
fills up the interval between the old and the new 
crop with other fruits. He has hardly seen a sick 
day in forty years, and pays no doctor’s bill. We 
want more good fruit, especially upon our farms, 
and the habit of eating fruit at our meals. This is 
just one of the matters in which farmers’ wives 
can exert an influence. Many a good man would 
set out fruit trees and bushes, if he were only re¬ 
minded of it at the right time. One right time will 
be this autumn—at least in all but the very coldest 
parts of the country. A few dollars invested then 
will bring abundant returns in from one to five 
years. It is more intimately connected with good 
morals, than our philosophers think. With good 
digestion it is quite easy to fulfil the law of love. 
TOYS & TOCTMMSo 
August, 
Whew I Here we are at the last month in summer! 
Already it is August, a name reminding us of another of 
those Caesars you will read about when you study 
history. We told you that July was named after Julius 
Caesar, so when Augustus Caesar came to be consul, a 
month had to be named in his honor. The month had a 
very good name ; the Romans called it SextUis, as it was 
the sixth month of their year. In the old way of dividing 
up the months, every other month bad 31 days, and the 
alternate ones had 30, besides February, which had 29, 
except in leap year, when it had 30. In this arrangement 
July had 31, and August 30 days, but Mr. Agustus Cresar, 
no doubt a pompous and disagreeable old fellow, had no 
idea of playing second fiddle to Julius Caesar. The 
month named after J. C. had 31 days, and why should 
the month named after him, A. C., have any less number 
of days ? Augustus wouldn’t stand it, he must have 
another day to that month of his, or he’d make “ Rome 
howl,” so to keep the old fellow quiet, they gave him 
another day to his month. And where do you think they 
took it from, from the months which had a plenty ?—No, 
they just robbed poor little February, which was already 
the poorest of the months, of a day, just to please 
Augustus, and now February has to get along most of the 
time, with only 28 days. Isn’t it strange that with all 
our modern learning, we depend for our divisions of the 
year, upon the whims of those old Romans ? This 
month we have the end of the Dog Days. These are not, 
as many suppose, days in which dogs are apt to go mad, 
but because the dog-star (Sirius) and the sun used to rise 
at the same time during the hottest part of the year, on 
the Mediterranean, and the great heat was supposed to 
be due to the evil influence of the Dog-star. But now 
that astronomy is better understood, it is known that 
this star does not rise with the sun with any regularity, 
and has no influence whatever in making the days hot. 
Indeed it is not exactly settled when the dog-days are, 
but most almanacs put them down from July 24th to 
August 24th. But really the term dog-days has no very 
definite meaning, and there is no more reason for being 
afraid of dogs on those days, than in any other. If the 
idea that dogs are more liable to disease on those days, 
than at any other time, will lead people to look after the 
comfort of the animals, it will do no harm. See that 
dogs which must be kept tied up, have a cool place, a 
plenty of water, and a run whenever in is convenient. 
- i —- 
When is a boat smaller than a bonnet?—When she is 
cap-sized, of course. 
Rabbits.— “ Herbert.” Where young rabbits have 
all the green food they want, they are apt to eat too much 
of it, and this brings on disease. Old rabbits are not 
troubled in this way, and do not need so much care. 
Give more dry food, such as grain and clover-hay, and 
fewer cabbage leaves and other green stuff. 
How Engravings are Made. 
In June we told you, in answer to our Michigan boy 
Charles, and his sister, something about the way in 
which wood engravings were made, but somehow omit¬ 
ted to finish the story in the July number. If you look 
back to what was said in June, you will see that the un¬ 
touched block prints black, where there are grooves cut 
in the block they will print white, and where there are a 
number of fine grooves close together the block will 
print a tint, and this tint will be lighter or darker as the 
spaces between the grooves are narrower or wider, and 
by a careful management of this the engraver can pro¬ 
duce all the way from a very dark tint, almost solid 
black, to a very light gray that is nearly white. Now you 
want to know how the picture gets upon the block be¬ 
fore the engraver begins to cut it; indeed, this was one 
of the things that Charlie and his sister were most 
troubled about. To make a block ready to be printed in 
these pages, requires the work of two, and sometimes 
three persons. We told you about the box-wood in June, 
and how it was prepared of the proper thickness and ol 
any needed size by the box-wood worker, who makes one 
surface very smooth. Now let us take the first cut on 
page 300 of this number, which is a yoke for a bull. The 
editor who wrote the article makes with pencil on paper 
a sketch, showing what he wants; it may be a coarse 
sketch, but gives the idea, and he puts down the propor¬ 
tions. In this case the editor designs the picture. Then 
the draughtsman takes it, and picks out a block of the 
right size; if the block does not seem quite smooth 
enough, he rubs it with a flat piece of pumice stone 
and water until the surface suits him, and lets it dry. 
The box-wood is yellow, so he whitens the surface to 
make his drawing show plainer. There are several ways 
of doing this, one of them being to take a glazed card, 
such as business cards are printed on, and which have 
the surface thickly coated with white paint (white lead), 
he wets the card and rubs it on the block, and the paint 
rubs off of the card on to the block, and by a little care 
he can get the surface of the block nicely coated, so that 
when it is dry it is almost as white as a piece of paper. 
He then, with a very fine-pointed lead-pencil, draws the 
yoke of just the right size, making his lines just as they 
should be in the engraving. This goes to the engraver, 
who cuts away all the wood but the lines the artist or 
draughtsman has made, and when the engraving is print¬ 
ed, it will show on the pages in ink exactly what was 
drawn on the block in pencil. Here the engraver has 
only to follow the lines that were marked out for hfm. 
Now look at the upper right-hand cut on the same page 
(300)—the rear view of a chicken coop—you will see that 
a large portion of the coop is shaded, or covered with a 
tint, and if you will look closely, you will see that the 
shade or tint is all made with fine lines, just as is shown 
at the left-hand of fig. 3, last June—but as some of yon 
may not have the paper at hand, we give it here again. 
Now, in drawing this block, the draughtsman did not 
draw all those lines, but he rubbed up some India-inlc 
with water, and took a brush and painted that shade on 
the block just as dark as he thought it should be ; so 
when it went to the engraver’s hands, it had no lines for 
him to follow, but was just a “ wash,” as they call it. 
Here is where the engraver shows his skill, in knowing 
what lines to make, so that the block shall print that 
shade just as it was put on by the artist. It is not very 
difficult on a plain thing like this, but suppose it is a per¬ 
son’s face, or an animal’s body, where the shade is con- 
ENGRAVING TINT. 
stantly varying, here light, and there heavy, with only a; 
wash which the engraver has, so to speak, to interpret 
by using lines. You will see from this, that to be a good 
wood engraver, one must be able to do something bes^es 
follow the lines that are drawn for him—that is a kind 
of mechanical work and is Vasily learned—but he has to 
be something of an artist; his engraving is all lines, 
and nothing but lines, that are finer or coarser, near 
together or far apart, and he must know just what kind 
of lines will make an engraving that will print exactly 
what the artist has washed on with a brush. The ability 
to do this makes all the difference between good and poor 
engravers. There is not space to tell you now how en¬ 
gravings are copied; that must wait until another time, 
but there is one thing that we must tell you about. The 
artist must recollect that his drawing will be reversed in 
printing, and if he were designing a label for tomato 
cans, and drew upon the block TOMATO, the engraver 
would follow the drawing, but when the label was print¬ 
ed, it would read OTAMOT—which would be rather puz¬ 
zling. Even the best artists sometimes forget this, and 
we find, when it is too late, that a man is on the wrong 
side of his oxen, or a woman is milking the cow on the 
wrong side, and people write letters asking if that is the 
way we drive oxen, or milk, and make fun of it. It serves 
us right, too, for we, who have so much to do with en¬ 
gravings, ought to keep in mind the fact that everything 
is reversed in printing an engraving. 
The B>oct«i*’s Talks.—Afeoiit Click- 
Beetles and other Insects. 
Some one sent me a beetle tbe other day, and wished 
to know what it was, and “ all about it.”—As it is an 
insect which is not very rare, (nor is it very common), I 
thought I would have its portrait taken, so that when 
you find one like it, you will know what it is.—“ Oh 
yes, I shall know that beetle when I see it. I can tell it 
by its big eyes ."—Some of you may say, and a great 
mistake you would make, though a very common one, as 
those large black spots do look very much like eyes. No, 
they are not eyes ; just see where they are placed. An 
insect is no more likely to have eyes there, than you are 
to have them on your shoulder blades. Its eyes are in 
its head, and are those little roundish bunches you see 
just under where the horns or feelers join the head. The 
engraving shows the insect of the natural size, and you 
can see that it is one of the largest beetles in the northern 
states. It is klack, with its wing-cases, the two hard 
shell-like covers that form the most of the back, marked 
with fine sunken lines or furrows, and sprinkled with 
white dots; the chest or thorax, the part where the “ eye ” 
spots are, is covered with a whitish mealy kind of pow¬ 
der, all except the spots themselves, which are very black 
aud have a velvety look. If you should find one of these 
beetles, do not be afraid of it, as it is not able to harm 
any one. If you are afraid, 
you Will not see one of the 
most interesting things 
about it. Place the insect on 
the table on its back; it 
may kick a little, but will not 
be able to turn itself over by 
the help of its legs. Watch 
it—“ Click 1 ’’—and up it goes 
with a bounce, several inches 
from Ihe table, and if it 
alights on its feet, it is all 
right, and can travel, hut if 
it falls upon its back, it will 
presently try again, and keep 
on bouncing until it comes 
down right side up It is 
a very sudden jerk that it 
makes, and what is curi- CLICK beetle. 
ous, it has an arrangement 
expressly for making it. If you examine the under side, 
you will see at the bottom of the chest, a little blunt 
point, just between the first pair of legs, right behind 
this is a sort of sheath or cavity, in which the point rests. 
The insect bends back its head and chest, so as to un¬ 
sheath the point, then suddenly straightens itself so that 
the point goes into the sheath, like the stroke of a little 
