be profitable to the general reader. The 
galvanic battery should not be used, except 
under the direction and by the advice of a 
competent physician. 
CLOCKWORK FOR RAISING WATER 
ESCUTCHEON OR MILK MIRRORS OF 
COWS. 
So little is said concerning the milk-mir¬ 
rors of cows, that I infer comparatively 
little, or nothing, is known to what should 
be, of this, an almost sure method of de¬ 
termining the milk-yielding capacity of 
cows, or the future capaoity ot an unyield¬ 
ing heifer —t. €., one which has ne'er 
brought forth a calf—that I am s > 
induced to call the attention of j 
your readers, and more particu- / 
larly the attention of your cor- I 
respondents to this subject, which 
Bhould be understood by all Btock 
raisers, and more especially dairy stock 
raisers. It was some five years since that I 
first learned the practicality of correctly 
judging a dairy cow’s value by her escutch¬ 
eon or milk-mirror. Since that time while 
attending the Fairs, or visiting privato 
herds, the milk-mirror and the dairyman’s 
record almost invariably agree as to the 
value of a cow for milk. If a cow is seen 
at an exhibition pen with a full and extend¬ 
ed udder from non-milking it is no sign she 
Is a great milker; but a cow with a goodmir- 
ror and its outlines clearly marked, a deep 
udder and extending well fox*ward at its line 
of juncture with the belly, will not sadly 
disappoint her milker at the pail. It Is a 
rare thing to find a poor milch cow having 
a good mirror, but au almost unknown cir¬ 
cumstance would be to find a great milk- 
giver with no mirror. 
As some, and probably many, of your 
readers may not understand the meaning 
of escutcheon or milk-milTor, it may bo 
well to state that the upruuning hair on 
iEollan Harp.—A coxrespoudeut wants 
to know what an iEollan harp is, and how 
it is made. It is a simple musical instru¬ 
ment w'hich produces harmonic sounds 
when placed in a current of wind. It is 
formed by stretching eight or ten strings of 
cat-gut, ail tuned in unison, over n wooden 
shell or box, made frequently In the form 
A correspondent asks if water can oe 
raised by moans of clockwork and a weight, 
and also wishes a description of the ar- 
raugement of -wheels, etc., required. The 
question involves a consideration of points 
which have a very general interest, and as 
the long. Winter evenings, when hundreds 
of Rural readers will be exer- 
N. ciBing their ingenuity in all kinds 
\ of inventions, are at hand, a few 
\ words on the subject may not 
| be'out of place. 
That water may be raised by a 
weight is obvious enough. To raise 100 gal¬ 
lons of water (about 800 pounds) to a hight 
of 35 feet, would require a weight of the 
same amount, falling through an equal 
hight, proper allowance beingmade for loss 
of friction, etc., which may arnouut to from 
fifteen to fifty per cent, of the available 
power employed. Your coirespondent gives 
no clue to the purpose for which he wishes 
to employ this arrangement; but if be is 
desirous of simply obtaining a stream of 
water equal to 100 gallans in 24 hours, liis 
best and cheapest plan would be to pump 
the water into a tank, and allow it to flow 
out by means of a self-regulating tap. The 
amount of water required might be raised 
to the given hight in less than fifteen min¬ 
utes, by a moderately strong and active 
man. 
Arrangements of this kind intended for 
driving sewing machines, churns, grinding 
apparatus, etc., have been frequently de¬ 
vised and published, and yet scarcely ft 
Winter passes without bringing before tbe 
public some wonderful invention by which 
all manner of work can be accomplished 
with the expenditure of very little power; 
at least so run the claims of the inventor. 
Very few of these devices have come into 
general use, however, simply because the 
waste of power is too great for any practical 
purpose. This waste of pow-er is duo chiefly 
to the enormous friction which is found in 
all machines where very powerful springs 
or very great weights are' controlled in their 
Friction is always directly 
shown herewith, or sloping like a desk. 
The sounds produced by the rising and 
falling wind, iu passing over the striugs, 
are of a drowsy and lulling character, very 
pleasant to an idle listener. On page 43, 
Run ax, New-Yorker, J uly 22,1871, we gave 
detailed directions for the making of these 
harps. Our correspondent will do well to 
consult that article. 
Stone-colored Wash Wanted. —Can 
you, or auy of your readers oblige me with 
a recipe for making a stone-colored wash 
that will be durable on wood, without using 
oil. We have several hundred yards of 
chestnut, pale fencing here, which I washed 
over, a year ago with lime and Ohio brown, 
mixed with water, but it did not stand the 
weat her, and the whole fence looks as clear 
to day as if it had never been colored at all. 
—A. B., Reading, Pa. 
Figure 8. 
a good xnilking strain and having a good 
mirror, and sired by a bull with the same 
requisites, will almost invariably have an 
unchangable aud good mirror before wean¬ 
ing time. 
The mirrors on the front of the bag or 
udder are impoi-tant, but difficult to de¬ 
scribe and examine. I will throw out a few 
hints concerning their form and features, 
and let tbe reader go to the trouble of prac¬ 
tically testing them if be so deaix-e. On the 
two front quarters are mirrors formed by 
tbe hair running backwards over each of 
them aud around the teats up behind, form¬ 
ing the rear, thigh and vertical mirror. The 
extent and bx-eadth of this, forward, are 
very important, not only on the udder, but 
on the belly. In front, midway between 
tbe two teats, the hair on tbe belly runs 
forwax-d, nearly back to the udder; but the 
further front the line of division between 
the forward aud backward running hair, 
.directly in front of the fore-quarters of 
the uddder, the more desirable the mirror. 
Should it extend well up on the sides of the 
animal, it is a good omen. 
This being so difficult of explanation, I 
have effected another rude drawing to ex¬ 
plain t he maitci-. This can be best seen by 
throwing the animal on its back, and is 
more applicable to calves than to larger 
cows or bulls. If a young animal has a 
thigh mirror like figure 2, and an under one. 
resembling figure 3, it is Bafe to say it will 
be a good breeding animal fpr milk, wheth¬ 
er it be a male or a female. If the thigh 
mirror terminate with a curl or cowlick at 
the sides, and lias the other desirable points, 
you may rest assured It will be a milking 
animal of the highest order, if a female, 
and an excellent bl eeding animal if a male. 
A aide fx-om the mirror, the feel of the 
skin and its color, the build of the animal, 
the milk veins and the size of their en¬ 
trance into the body, all have their weight 
in determining a good milker, aud he who 
looks at the whole animal instead of solely 
at her udder, gets tbe best opinion of an 
animal's full worth. The amount and qual¬ 
ity of feed have vei-v important bearings, 
as well as the sire aud dam. 
Msrrimac Co., N. H. Geo. R. Drake. 
How to Construct a Ilorse-Power.— 
Will some of the readers of the Rural 
New-Yorker please Inform me, through 
its columns, as to the best and cheapest 
mode of constructing a small horse-power, 
to be propelled by one or two hoi-ses, for 
running a turning lathe, grindstone, churn¬ 
ing, and the like?—V. W. M., Perry, N. Y. 
BEE NOTES AND QUERIES. 
movements, 
pi'oportioxied to pressure, and if we plaoe a 
weight of one ton on a shaft, the friction 
on the journals must of necessity be very 
great. If then this friction should be made 
to act during a loug time, as where the de¬ 
scent of a heavy weight is made to drive a 
machine for twenty-four hours, it is impos¬ 
sible to prevent its absorbing a laxge pro¬ 
portion of the available power. 
Springe, weights, electro-magnetic ma¬ 
chines, and similar contrivances, have been 
tiied over and over again, and have been 
found wanting, although they have ab¬ 
sorbed the best efforts of very able men. 
There is little hope, therefore, that any¬ 
thing of value will be discovered by work¬ 
ing iu this direction. And yet, a small, 
cheap rnotoi*, calculated to give about one- 
tenth of a horse power, arid to sell for less 
than $25, could hardly fail to command a 
most extensive sale. Aud when we look at 
the little engines w hick are sold for a dollar, 
it would almost seeiu that there ought to be 
no difficulty in devising an engine such as 
we have mentioned. The fuel must be kei’- 
osene or gas; coal, wood, and naptha, being 
inadmissible. It will be impossible to use 
either coal or wood without the production 
of ashes or dirt, and, moreover, fires iu 
which they are used require constant at¬ 
tention. Naphtha is altogether too danger¬ 
ous, aud should never be admitted into a 
house under any ciroumstances whatever. 
At present gas furnishes the safest and most 
manageable source of heat, aud when care- 
fully consumed, iu a good burner, it is by 
no means an uneconomical fuel. But it 
cannot be had everywhere, and at present 
it would seem that, unless keroseixe can be 
made use of, tbe demand for such engines 
would be very much circumscribed. J. p. 
Do Bees Prevent Frixc till cation of 
Seed ?—I am inclined to think they do. I 
am confident my neighbor’s bees (be keeps 
twenty-five swarms) destroyed my buck¬ 
wheat crop last season. He got the honey, 
and I got no pancakes in consequence. I 
believe the honey in the blossom of plants 
is as necessary to the development andper- 
feotion of the seed of the plant as that the 
suu should shine and rain and dew fall; I 
believe that this bee-keeping mania in thick¬ 
ly-settled districts is almost as much of a 
nuisance, and as great a wrong to fruit- 
growers, as if my neighbor should Insist ou 
breeding Colorado potato beetles to feed on 
my potato vines. Bees that forage on my 
buckwheat ai‘e robbers, and rob me to ben¬ 
efit their owners. I hope this subject will 
be ventilated, and the rights of those who 
do not keep bees in some way protected.— 
Anti-Bee Keeper. 
Figure 1. 
tbe rear of an animal, on or between the 
thighs, l’epresents the mirror. The greater 
part of the hair covering a cow runs down; 
nnd in some of the bovlues all of that on 
the rear runs downward too; but that run¬ 
ning upwards around the udder is what 
constitutes the mirror, and the line where 
the hair running up, meets that running 
down, is the demarcation of the mirror, and 
can be easily seen and felt; the termination 
on the thigh takes the form of a cowlick, or 
what is sometimes called a rose ou the back 
af a pig. 
This mirror assumes various sizes and 
forms, ns will be seen by Figs. 1 and 2; the 
form given in Fig. 2 being considered supe- 
Wingless Bees.—Cannot'some of j’our 
coi-respondents tell me the cause of so many 
wingless bees iu my hives? There seem to 
be an unusual number, and I cannot under¬ 
stand it. Is there a 'remedy for such phe¬ 
nomena ? They are driven out of the hives, 
and fall to the ground. Some have no sem¬ 
blance of wings; others a slight hut imper¬ 
fect development where the wings ought to 
be. Who understands it?—S equitor. 
NOTES FOR HERDSMEN 
Italian Bees.—P. R. 8., Sharon, Ohio, is 
informed that it seems to be settled that 
the Italians are better honey gatherers than 
the common black bees of this country; 
that they will lay up honey enough to live 
upon when stronger black Bwarms will 
starve; that they fly swifter (hence, make 
more trips), and obtain honey from plants 
from which the common black bee gathers 
none. 
The Frost Grape, as a Honey-Pro¬ 
ducing Plant, I find has few superiors. I 
mean VLtis cordljolia. Have any of your 
readers noticed the fact that it atti’acts the 
bees iu great numbers during its season of 
blooming. The honey made from it is ex¬ 
cellent, aud I think it should take high rank 
as a honey-producing plant.—N. C. Weber. 
Sour Apples for Cows.— Erastus Ells¬ 
worth, an East Windsor, Vt., farmer, has 
been trying the experiment of feeding sour 
apples to his cows, this seasou, with very 
encouraging results. Taking a cow from a 
summer pasture, he commenced feeding 
her on half a peck of sour apples a day, in¬ 
creasing gradually to one bushel a day, with 
the result of increasing her milk 50 per cent, 
in quantity, while that of other cows in 
the same pasture decreased slightly. He 
afterward took another cow, nearly dry, 
from a Fall pasture, and commenced with 
half a peck per day, increasing as iu the 
former case, and this cow’s milk was in¬ 
creased six quarts a day. 
SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL NOTES 
Figure 2. 
rior to that of Fig. 1, and the broader the 
mirror the better; this form being consid¬ 
ered vastly superior to those where the 
band is long, at tho sacrifice of its width, 
as shown in Fig. 1. The mirror is greatly 
damaged by having the hair runulug down¬ 
ward iuto the thigh mirror (Fig. 2) and 
sub-dividing it into parts. Experience and 
observation convince mo that the further 
the mirror extends on the thighs the better; 
and that tbe more easily desoribable .the 
line of demarcation, the more velvety the 
Galvanic Batteries.—Please inform me 
the price of galvanic batteries and the ef¬ 
fect of their use upon the circulation and 
action of the human heart; and what ad¬ 
vantage electricity is as a tonic.— Admiring 
Reader. 
Galvanic batteries may be purchased at 
from $7.50 to $50 each. Their effects upon 
the human system are various—depending 
upou the condition of the individual upon 
whom they are used. To disous3 this mat¬ 
ter iu full would require more space than 
we can devote to it and more than would 
Rinderpest and Foot-and-Mouth Dis¬ 
ease continues not only t » prevail but to 
increase in nearly all the districts of Great 
Britain, causing great alarm and resulting 
in the most rigid measures for its suppres¬ 
sion. 
To Prevent Swarms Bearing New 
Hives, it is reoonimended to move them, 
as soon as possible, sevei'al rods from where 
they were hived. 
