176 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Mat, 
is passed. When one roller is turned by the 
crank the other is also turned, and the sheep is 
gradually lowered into the dipping liquid in the 
TANK FOll DIPPING SHEEP. 
tank. The sheep is led up the gangway quietly 
on to the movable bottom, there is no plunging 
or splashing, and when the dipping has been 
given, the floor is raised and the sheep’s fleece 
is squeezed free from all superfluous dip, which 
drains away through the holes into the tank 
again. The sheep is allowed to depart by way 
of the sloping platform as quietly as it was 
brought up. As the dip is used up the tank 
should be replenished from a barrel near by. 
The lambs should be dipped after the sheep are 
shorn, as then all the vermin will have gathered 
on to them and may be destroyed with ease. 
and the severity of it is seemingly increased 
when we consider that by a little arrangement 
the work can be done by the horses, and the 
fanner’s muscles be 
spared. Every farmer 
ought to have a horse 
hay-fork. Those that 
have one can procure 
two poles 14 or 16 feet 
long, tie them together 
at the top, stay them 
with one or two guy 
ropes to the barn-yard 
fence, and hang the 
horse-fork tackle to the 
top of them. These 
poles may be placed one 
on each side of the ma¬ 
nure pile, as in the en¬ 
graving, in such a posi¬ 
tion that the fork may 
be made to take up the 
manure and drop it into 
the wagon-box without any other handling be¬ 
ing needed. The lower pulley should be fast¬ 
ened to one of the spokes of the wagon wheel, 
as shown in the engraving; or one or both 
horses are removed from the wagon and 
hitched on to the rope, and in five 
minutes two smart boys of twelve 
years of age, who could not easily 
lift a liaud-forkful of manure into the 
wagon, can put up a good load. 
•o°^ 
Castor Beans. 
nary crop, and the market price is generally 
$1.50 a bushel in St. Louis, which is the princi¬ 
pal market in the North-western States. The 
refuse of the oil-mills makes a valuable fertili¬ 
zer, being worth nearly one third as much as 
guano. For composting with coarse vegetable 
matter or swamp muck it is especially useful. 
As feed it is totally useless; in fact, from its 
strong purgative qualities, it is dangerous to 
stock, and they should not be permitted 
access to it. 
A Water-Wheel for Irrigation. 
The vineyards which lie along the banks of 
the rapid rivers of Northern Italy are supplied 
with water raised by water-wheels. The same 
device might be made useful in-many places in 
our own country. It is shown in the accom¬ 
panying illustration. The wheel is made 
roughly of wood, after the manner of the paddle- 
wheel of a steamboat, and is made to revolve 
by the flow of the stream in which its lower 
part is immersed. Buckets, which are merely 
board boxes about 10 inches square and 20 
inches deep, are fixed to the rim inside of the 
paddles. As each bucket passes through the 
WATER-WHEEL FOR IRRIGATION. 
water it is filled, and its position is such that it 
rises nearly full. As it approaches the top, 
and, in the revolution of the wheel to which it 
is fixed, is gradually turned upside down, its 
contents are poured out into a trough which 
leads the water away to the land. The mouths 
of the buckets project a little beyond the rim 
of the wheel so as to discharge at the center of 
the broad gutter, which is removed only to suffi¬ 
cient distance to allow the ends of the paddles 
to pass. The size of the wheel must be regu¬ 
lated by the force of the stream and by the 
higlit to which a certain quantity of water is to 
be lifted. 
Broom-Corn Culture. 
We have before us a great number of inquiries 
about the cultivation and management of broom- 
corn and its manufacture into brooms. At the 
outset it would be proper to caution farmers to 
whom this crop is a new one against rushing 
into it unadvisedly, for it is one of those special 
crops which depend on a great many contin¬ 
gencies of soil, seed, weather, care in harvest¬ 
ing and preparation for market, to say nothing 
of the uncertaiiAbjs of the market, which are 
The Use of the Horse-Fork. 
The mechanical appliances for aiding the 
laboi of the farm are not nearly so much availed 
of as they might be. To confine ourselves to 
only one illustration of this we here refer to a 
use that may be made of the horse liay-fork at 
this season. We have made considerable use 
of it to load manure from the pile in the barn¬ 
yard. Loading manure is the hardest work the 
farmer has to perform, and it has almost always 
to be done in a hurry. If 100 loads of manure 
have to be hauled out, there are over 200 tons 
to be lifted by the hands and arms a height of 
five feet into a wagon. This is severe labor, 
For a crop of castor beans the 
ground should be well plowed and 
harrowed.- Lay it out in rows six 
feet apart, and between every sixth 
and seventh row leave a space wide 
enough for a wagon to pass through 
wdieu gathering the crop. The seed 
should be covered with hot water, 
and be allowed to stand 24 hours be¬ 
fore planting. Six or eight seeds 
may be dropped in a hill as soon as 
the ground is warm, to be thinned 
out to two plants when all danger 
from cut-worms has passed. The 
ground should cultivated 
until the plants are three 
feet high. About the first 
of August some of the 
seeds will be ripe, and 
must be gathered im¬ 
mediately, or the pods 
will burst and the beans 
pop out. The clusters of 
seed-pods which are ripe 
are cut off entirely, and 
the gathering continues 
until frost kills the plants. 
The pods are to be scat¬ 
tered upon a piece of 
hard, smooth, cleanly- 
swept ground, surround¬ 
ed by a fence, and they 
arc to be turned and dried 
until all the beans are 
shelled out. Then the 
floor is cleared for another 
lot. If rain is expected, 
the beans must be raked 
up and covered and kept 
dry. The beans are cleaned in a common fan- 
mill, and should be kept in sacks in a cool place 
until sold. Twenty bushels per acre is an ordi¬ 
ARRANGEMENT OF nORSE-FORK FOR LOADING MANURE. 
