PUMPKINS FOR MILCH COWS, ETC. 
81 
PUMPKINS FOR MILCH COWS. 
We have often called the attention of our 
readers to the great value of pumpkins for milch 
cows and other stock. For the former, they are 
particularly valuable, as vve have often proved 
from our own experience. When of the right 
kind and well ripened, they are a sweet, nutri¬ 
tious, and succulent vegetable, easy of digestion, 
find much relished by animals. We have found 
that a cow, giving ten quarts of milk per day 
when fed with hay, and pumpkins, both morning 
and evening, in addition, have suddenly fallen 
away to five when the pumpkins were withdrawn, 
though the full allowance of hay was continued. 
Their great merits for this purpose are every¬ 
where acknowledged, when properly observed. 
There is no vegetable more easily raised than 
the pumpkin. It requires a rich soil to produce 
abundantly ; and what crop does not ? It must 
also be light, porous, and dry. Pulverise the 
ground thoroughly; and by thoroughly, we 
mean, plow deeply, and with such a plow and 
such a plowman as will crumble the soil as it 
passes over, and after it has left the moldboard; 
then harrow, if there be any clods requiring 
this operation—though we have seen land so 
evenly and so well plowed, so effectually mel¬ 
lowed, that any immediate successive operation 
was entirely superfluous. 
After preparing the land, and allowing it to 
be well warmed by the vernal sun, mark off' the 
rows six feet apart each way, which, with a 
marker 12 feet wide, and containing three teeth, 
each six feet apart, is readily done by a horse 
and boy. Then, with the fingers only, stick 
with the small, or germinating end downwards, 
eight or a dozen seeds within a circle of a 
foot, or drop and cover with a hoe. This forms 
the hill. A single vigorous vine is sufficient for 
each hill; but as the seed may be saved with 
little trouble, and it is very subject to loss from 
the cut worm and other casualties, it is better 
to have an abundance of it, and the super¬ 
numerary young plants are easily destroyed by 
the hoe. The principal cultivation may be done 
with the plow or cultivator. The soil requires 
to be kept loose, and the weeds down. A light 
hoe, immediately about the vines, may be occa¬ 
sionally required to lighten the earth, as the 
young plants are too tender to bear rough usage 
from the teeth of the horse machines, or the 
overturned clods. 
Some persons imagine, that, if the roots or hills 
of these or other vines are kept light and clear 
of weeds, it is sufficient, and that they may run 
indifferently over hard or barren earth, or a 
grassy sod. But this is a great mistake, and in 
two ways. First, the joints at each leaf, when 
in contact with moist, finely-pulverised, rich soil, 
will throw down roots, which, like the main 
ones, draw up nutriment for the support of the 
vine; and second, the vines and leaves them¬ 
selves absorb largely through their pores, from 
the ascending moisture and gases, which are 
constantly given off by such soils. But for 
these auxiliaries, a pumpkin vine, stretching out 
its polypus limbs for 20 or 30 feet in every 
direction, as they will sometimes do on a genial 
soil, when not too crowded, would have to suck 
in water at the main root, as rapidly as a double 
action force pump, or a Croton pipe under a 
50-head pressure, to supply the enormous evapo¬ 
ration of its broad leaves and leaky stems, in a 
sultry summer day. 
Pumpkins are generally made a secondary 
crop in this country, and are stuck into the hills 
of corn or potatoes, after the first hoeing; and, 
under these circumstances, the yield is fre¬ 
quently very large. But we are satisfied, that 
planted as an exclusive crop, few will be found 
more advantageous for early feeding, than the 
good, old-fashioned, yellow, field pumpkin. 
IRON RAILING-, GRATING, ETC. 
This is made entirely of wire and wrought 
iron. Among the numerous uses to which it is 
now applied we enumerate a few, as follows:— 
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Fig. 30. 
Enclosures for farms, public grounds, cemeteries, 
cottages, and gardens; window shutters and 
guards for private dwellings, lunatic asylums, 
prisons, &c.; columns and cornice work for cot- 
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Fig. 31. 
tages; tree boxes, a beautiful article; summer 
houses, arbors, arches, and verandahs; grating 
for sky lights (thief proof ) ; guards for steam¬ 
boats, vessels, &c., &c. 
This article may be advantageously intro¬ 
duced into every department where wood and 
cast iron are now used for railing, grating, &c. 
It is far preferable to cast iron, being woven 
entirely of wrought iron; by which process, 
additional strength, durability, and beauty of 
design is given to the fabric, at about half the 
cost of the former. 
The prices of the railing, exclusive of points, 
borders, or rosets, vary from 35 cents to $1.50 
per running foot, according to size and finish; 
Gates, from $3 to $10 each; points or top orna- 
