CHEESE MAKING.-HOT WATER FOR TREES, ETC. 
211 
may be secured; but the valuable horses thus cap¬ 
tured, are usually sold to such as place a high 
value on them, and the blood of their progeny is 
not permitted to flow among the plebeian veins of 
the common herds. 
There is the same diversity in shape, color, and 
characteristics among the native horses of this re¬ 
ion, as among the cattle. They are indifferently 
roken, and have a shuffling, scrambling kind of 
pace, or a short, scattering canter, which soon 
pumps out the little wind they have. Our worthy 
schepens of this city, permit the largest liberty in 
the exercise of horse flesh within their precincts, 
and the consequence is, numerous- exhibitions of 
solitary scrub racing, where the diminutive quad¬ 
rupeds scamper over the pavements at the top of 
their speed, which after all, is so moderate as to be 
attended with little danger to pedestrians. 
Of swine, I have seen few here. Some of these 
are very good, but there is no want of such as are 
otherwise. They are reared almost entirely for 
fresh meat, as the climate opposes an effectual bar¬ 
rier to curing it with safety. Could the meat-pick¬ 
ling apparatus be perfected, so as to be successfully 
applied here, it would save immense sums to the 
planters, which they are now obliged to expend for 
their supplies from abroad. 
Sheep abound on most of the plantations, to the 
extent, at least, of furnishing an ample supply of 
fresh mutton. They are usually large, hardy, 
coarse-woolled animals, nearly identical in appear¬ 
ance, with the northern sheep previous to their im¬ 
provement by the introduction of the Merino and 
best English sheep. They seem to thrive well, 
on the luxuriant white clovers, and other pas¬ 
tures which abound here, and yield a fine, though 
never very fat, carcass of excellent mutton. 
New Orleans , April nth , 1848. 
CHEESE MAKING. 
I have heard a great deal about the value of 
prairie grass for butter and cheese. And yet I 
heard a Hamburgh friend of mine say, a few days 
ago, that he had engaged to send all his cheese this 
season to Chicago, at a pretty round price. Why 
is this ? If the grass is really good for anything, 
in that region, why is it that cheese is not made 
there by the million % Surely it is not an art very 
hard io learn. If the pages of the American Agri¬ 
culturist alone were carefully examined, I think 
that directions enough might be found to enable any 
person to make a good cheese. In fact the valua¬ 
ble information given in this publication, at p. 233, 
vol. vi. might alone be sufficient, and worth ten 
times the cost of the whole set of this paper. 
How cheap knowledge is offered to the million 
now-a-days. And in no department of rural econo¬ 
my is the need of increased knowledge more appar¬ 
ent than in cheese making. Solon Robinson. 
Crown Point , Lake C. H., Ia. : ) 
March , 1848. } 
Improvement of Guano.— If the farmer possess 
a genuine sample of Peruvian guano, he can much 
improve its quality by the addition of a little plas¬ 
ter of Paris (gypsum), or powdered charcoal, both 
of which substances have the property of absorb¬ 
ing free ammoniacal gas. 
HOT WATER FOR TREES. 
In the April number of your paper, I notic d a 
remark on the experiment of pouring hot ley a , nd 
the roots of a peach tree, and the good effect at 
followed. To many of your readers this mus; m 
a fatal remedy, and have a place assigned to ir with 
the wild eccentricities of the age ; but, as to rnyself, I 
am sanguine in the belief, that, if it has not pro¬ 
duced the good result alluded to, it would do so 
with proper and timely application ; because, it is 
known now that ley is an excellent wash for trees, 
cleansing them from external insects, and causing 
the bark to assume a young and vigorous appear¬ 
ance. I think so, because I have heard of the goo rl 
effects of scalding water poured upon the groan-:, 
around trees. I am more than all confident that 
truth rests in the matter, from the fact that I have 
tried a somewhat similar experiment with perfect 
success. 
The particulars in my own case are as follows : 
—Some years ago, when shade trees were not so 
common as they now are (I wish for the comfort 
of the many that they were more common at the 
present time), I happened to be in the garden of a 
friend about the time of the expanding of the leaves, 
and saw in one of the borders a few locusts of from 
two to four feet high, which, as he said, he was 
going to eradicate from his grounds, simply because, 
as soon as they attained a certain size, they were 
destroyed by the borer, and then the roots threw up 
a multitude of shoots in all directions, and caused 
him much trouble, as well as vexation of spirit. 
With permission I took up several of these shoots, 
though he forewarned me of labor lost, and trans¬ 
ferred them to my grounds. Probably, I brought 
the rudiments of the borer w T ith them. At any rate, 
they were there in such numbers, that their gnaw¬ 
ings almost made me gnaw with rage. Actuated, 
no doubt, by a spirit somewhat congenial to that 
of the old lady, when she concluded to forestall the 
deadly workings of the peach worm, I boiled water 
in a tea kettle, and poured it boiling hot from the 
spout carefully over the trunks of these young 
trees, taking due care, where I could, to fill every 
worm hole. The result was, I did not kill one 
tree ; but the borers were all killed, or ran away—- 
I do not know which. None have ever reported 
themselves as wounded—none ready for service, 
unless, indeed, it were an occasional fugitive at the 
extremity of some unfortunate branch. But th£ 
trunks have never been troubled since, and those 
trees, now assuming the venerable appearance of 
age, have rewarded me many times by their fragrant 
flowers and beautiful foliage for the little vexation 
I endured and the scalding water it required. Why 
may not the peach worm be ousted in the same way % 
Since I am upon the locust, the inquiry occurs to 
me why is not this tree, so ornamental for shade, so 
rapid of growth, and so valuable for timber, more 
generally cultivated 1 Twenty years, in New Eng¬ 
land, as cold as her climate and as hard as her soil 
are, give it a good degree of perfection. Farther 
south, a less period will no doubt give it growth 
enough to render it valuable for timber or for fuel. 
But if cultivators would succeed well with it in 
regions where the borer infests it, I should say, avoid 
pruning. In my own experience I attribute the 
non-recurrence of the borer to the fact, that I let 
