BOUND SHOULDERS. 
Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker. 
SALT: HOW IT IS MADE. 
Young persons should be careful not to de¬ 
form themselves by improper postures when at 
work or play. A line, well moulded, upright 
form, always oommands our admiration. And 
young people should make especial effort, during 
their growing years, to grow upright. It should 
bo a matter of pride with them. And parents 
and teachers should make it a part of their sys¬ 
tem to prevent deformity resulting from unnat¬ 
ural positions and habits. The following arti¬ 
cle, ■written by M. L. Holbrook, M. D., should 
be carefully read by young and old: 
I speak of “ 
and stooping forms. 
BY AISACH 
round shoulders,” hollow chests, 
There are, perhaps, not 
three persons in any school of fifty pupils hut 
have them. It is so among people of nearly 3 ll 
professions and occupations, sexes and ages. 
Indeed, our whole arrangement of society could 
have been no better calculated if on purpose to 
produce them. Military men and sea-captains 
are usually exempt, and so are Indians, and 
those peasant women of Italy and other coun¬ 
tries that carry burdens on their heads. School¬ 
teachers are often exempt, though not always. 
Ladies with excessive vanity often escape. 
Mow what are the causes of this deformity, 
the consequences, and the remedy ? First, and 
in general, round shoulders are caused by the 
prevailing practice of doing everything in a 
bent-over position, from childhood up, so that, 
like the pumpkin) growing between two rails, 
we grow into bad forms. The low desks in our 
school-rooms, and the habit of plating our books 
on them, and bending over to study, produce 
round shoulders. I never knew a school-house 
with desks high enough, and do not believe 
there is oue in America, perhaps not in the 
world. They ought to he so high that bending 
over them would be impossible, aud the top 
adjustable, so as to be set at any angle of incli¬ 
nation. The desks we use in all our offices, 
shops, and places of business, are constructed as 
if man was hardly yet metamorphosed from 
some lower order of four-footed beings lo what 
God made him—upright. 
A VIRGIN FOREST IN PERU. 
when the Government of the State first took 
charge of the manufacture: 
Year. No. of bushels. 
1197,. 25,414 
1800,. 50,000 
1S10,. 460,000 
1820,. 668,329 
1830,. 1,435,446 
1840,. 2,622,305 
1850. 4,268,019 
1S60,. 5,593,447 
1802. 9,053,874 
The total number of bushels manufactured 
since 1797 has been 1445.001,422. 
The view from auy of the prominences about 
the head of the lake is interesting—the lake 
stretching skiningly away iu the sunlight and 
cosily resting in its setting of swelling slopes 
and hills. All around its ends and sides the 
long lines and shed roofs of the solar fields, and 
here, there, aud everywhere, the tall chimneys 
of the boiling works steaming forth to the 
smoky air. Back of all these, further up the 
valley, is Syracuse, with its pleasaut streets, its 
beautiful residences, itsgreat bu.-iness thorough¬ 
fares, its hum and bustle; while, still beyond, 
the valley smiles in Its wealth of line farms, 
pleasant hill-sides, crowned with noble mansions, 
and peace, plenty and prosperity broadly writ¬ 
ten on its fields. 
ten inehes, until it deposits its oxide of iron and 
greatly increases its strength. It is then drawn 
into the lime rooms where it deposits the sul¬ 
phate of lime, and it is there kept running 
along till crystals of salt, commence forming, 
when it is drawn iuto thu salting rooms where 
pure salt is rapidly deposited, having a coarse 
crystallization m the forms of hoppers and 
cubes. These vats being affected only by the 
sun, mu.-t be covered, and accordingly double, 
or A shaped roofs are made which are slid aside 
in fair weather, being supplied with rollers, and 
having frames beside them upon which they 
can be rolled when the vats are in use. 
The vats can only be used in dry, sunny 
weather, and this method of manufacture is 
suspended in the fall and re-commenced iu the 
spring. Eveu a slight shower of rain is suffi¬ 
cient to put back the process of evaporation for 
a long time. The covers are eighteen by six¬ 
teen feet, aud the custom hits obtained of naming 
the vats “covers," and calculating the amount 
of salt produced therefrom, a cover generally 
yielding fifty bushels, and the product of the 
“field" being measured by the number of 
covers. An acre of land will be required for 
every sixty covers, room being allowed for the 
covers when not in use, and also for roadways, 
and will yield about three thousand bushels of 
salt. 
The number of covers in use in 1863 was 
■44,231, and these stretch over the low grounds 
around the lake, presenting a singular appear¬ 
ance with their loug parallel rows of sheds, all 
about the same height, and presenting great 
uniformity. These sheds, at present, cover 
something over two hundred acres on the bor¬ 
der of the lake, occupying land that has been 
reclaimed from the lake by lowering its outlet. 
The positions which 
we assume in our work tend to produce stoop¬ 
ing. The chairs we sit in are mostly made for 
deformed people. Persons with square shoul¬ 
ders are pained and made uneasy by sitting in 
them. It is even questionable whether our 
chairs were not better without backs—(I mean 
those in which we sit to write and do work, and 
not our chairs for parlor and sitting-room use)— 
than that they should, as they now do, crowd 
the shoulders forward and cramp the chest, and 
those with bucks should be made after a normal 
and not an abnormal standard. 
The w ay in which we lie in bed helps to pro¬ 
duce round shoulders. High bolsters, and higher 
pillows on top of them, may make a bed look 
fine, and be very convenient for those who wish 
to watch their pretty toes all night; but if we 
wish to rise in the morning an inch taller than 
we went to bed, and preserve an upright form, 
we must not seek it by such means. True, the 
head should be kept higher than the feet, but 
not by bending the neck or back. Let the foot 
PERUVIAN FORESTS. 
their founder, renowned in history, legend and 
6ong as the “ wise man," Hi-a-w vt-ha. Here, 
for many hundred years, had been held their oon- 
sullutious and deliberations, aud the Onondagas, 
as holding the adytum, or sacred place of the 
« great house," were looked upon by the other 
tribes a* were the Lovites of old by the congre¬ 
gation. 
In 1 hog, .John Richardson erected a frame. 
salt work, (the former ones being log structures,) 
containing a ten kettle block in a rude arch — a 
thing far beyond anything before attempted, and 
looked upon almost as a miracle. Thus the 
manufacture grew—first the “ sample ” of Father 
Lk Moyne; then the “fifteen gallon kettle;" 
then the. “block," till now the whole number of 
boiling works are 310, of which, in 1802, but 
about 200 were in operation, owing to the lack 
of brine. In 1812, the experiment of making 
salt by evaporation of the water by solar heat 
was tried, and the result was found favorable; 
since which time this method of manufacture 
has steadily increased, until, iu 1862, its product 
is iu excess of 2,000,000 bushels, which, to dis¬ 
tinguish it, goes into market as “solar salt." 
Snell are the outlines of its history, and now a 
word about tlie process of manufacture. Great 
changes have taken place; the dense thickets 
that covered the marshy ground around the lake 
have given way to the palatial residences of the 
city; the Indian wigwam, on the higher ground 
on the shore, to the brown sides of the salt- 
block : llie curling smoke of the camp fire to the 
tall chimney waving its smoky banner in the 
air; and the corn-fields of the Indian to the 
long lines of the “solar salt-fields.” Where the 
©chocs of the French Count’s cannon first broke 
the primeval stillness, now the fierce engine 
shrieks along; while the light canoe of the In¬ 
dian and the lumbering bultoau of the French¬ 
man have given way to the bulky canal boat, 
toiling eastward with the produce of broad 
prairies. 
The brine which is used for producing salt 
contains from fifteen to seventeen per cent, of 
saline matter, of which about ninety-seven parts 
iu every hundred arc pure salt. Therefore, 
about thirty gallons of the brine will make 
one bushel (50 pounds) of salt, though formerly 
it took forty to produce the same amount. 
The reduction of brine takes place in the fol¬ 
lowing manner:—The salt water is conveyed 
from the pump by means of pump-logs, aud 
carried to the boiling works, which are long, 
frame erections, with a tall chimney at one end; 
in the interior is a long arch or frame of brick¬ 
work, into which are set, in two pamllell rows, 
the kettles. These rows run from the front of 
the “block” to the chimney at the other end, 
and arc supplied with water by a pump-log 
running between thorn, with conduits to each 
kettle, supplied with stoppers to shut off or con¬ 
tinue the supply. The number of kettles iu a 
block varies from sixty to eighty, and even as 
high as oue hundred and eight have been used. 
These are heated by a furnace, the doors of 
which urc at the front end, the heat being car¬ 
ried the whole length of the arch by the draft 
of the chimney. The kettles used are of cast- 
iron, perfectly hemispherical, about four feet in 
diameter, and containing each about one hun- 
ln four or five days to “ pick ” out the deposit 
of “ bitteriugs,” ns the impurities are called, 
and with which the bottoms and sides are en¬ 
crusted. 
A visit to a salt block reveals, on our entrance, 
a square built brick-fronted arch, about twelve 
or fourteen feet, wide and about six feet high, in 
the front of which is the furnace well supplied 
with fuel through two doors opening into the 
arch. On each side are flights of steps leading 
to the top of the arch, on mounting which, 
through the cloud of white steam that almost 
hides the sight, you can dimly sec two long 
rows of kettles stretching back toward the 
chimneyed end of the building, and on the top 
of each kettle is a coarse, shallow basket, piled 
full of a product white as snow, while amid the 
cloudy chaos aro seen indistinctly the forms of 
workmen dipping the white salt from the kettles 
into the baskets with their long ladles. On 
the right you look down in the bins where hun¬ 
dreds of bushels are piled in a vast snow-bank, 
and on crossing to the other side of the building, 
the tap, tap, of the hammer shows that the pro¬ 
cess of barreling is going on, which, consists iu 
shoveling the salt into barrels and heading, 
hooping, and marking with the brand of the 
maker. All above and around is indistinctness: 
for the cloud of warm steam tills all the build¬ 
ing, revealing, only occasionally revealing, the 
rough beams and brown braces and rafters. On 
lookiug into the kettles some are observed with 
a white scum of crystallized salt on the surface, 
others in a state of violent ebullition, and others 
with the sides encrusted with pure white crys¬ 
tals, 
Tn boiling, one cord of wood will produce 
about forty-live bushels of salt, and lately the 
introduction of coal has been claimed to be a 
great saving in fuel; one tun of the latter pro¬ 
ducing as much as a cord of the former, and 
costing, usually, less. These boiling works give 
a picturesque appearance to the city, and it 
looks very like a second Pittsburg with its tall 
chimneys diinning the air with their dusky 
plumes and the white clouds rising from the 
gray, wooden works. Ou the eastern shore of 
the lake, a few miles further down, is Liverpool, 
the residence of the veritable Hiawatha. 
In the above l have given but one method of 
manufacture, that of boiling; another method, 
that of solar evaporation, remains to be de¬ 
scribed. From the pump-works the brine is 
conveyed in long lines of pump-logs to shal¬ 
low vats, about eighteen feet wide and continu¬ 
ous iu length, sometimes nearly a quarter of a 
mile. These vats have divisions every twelve 
feet, but are arranged so that the water flows 
from one to the other. They are supported on 
piles, or posts, varying from three to eight feet 
in height, with the grounds being slightly in¬ 
clined to allow the flowing of the brine through¬ 
out their entire length. The usual depth is 
about a foot, and the brine, being introduced at 
one end, flows very slowly the length of the 
range, perhaps a furlong, and then passes into 
another vat by the side of the former, and 
leisurely flows back again, and is again trans¬ 
ferred. and so travels more than a mile exposed 
to the wind and sun, with an average depth ot 
Cost of Cultivating Land by Steam. — 
A Mr. Smith, of "VVoolston, England, has pub¬ 
lished an account of the cost of cultivating land 
by steam for eight years, iu which he says that 
the cost of preparing land for roots w as. w ith 
steam, $2.88; with horses, $10.03; for barley 
two years. $2.10 with steam against $0.05 by 
horse-power; four years for wheat, $30.20 by- 
steam against the same for horse-power, and 
foots up a total for a number of other articles, 
which shows a gain of 200 per cent, in favor ot 
steam. The writer says also that besides the 
economy of the plan he had much better crops. 
Those who apply themselves wholly to little 
things are sure to catch the littleness. 
Love sees what no eye sees. Love hears 
what no ear hears; and w hat never rose in the 
heart of man. Love prepares for its object. 
The good fortune of the bad bow-s their heads 
down to the earth; the bad fortune of the good 
turns their faces up to heaven. 
Lavatkk advises that we trust him little 
who praises all, him less w ho censures all, and 
him least who is indifferent about all. 
