THE CULTIVATOR. 
245 
ers, “ As fine as you can, but heavy.” Others reverse 
the maxim, but say the same thing—As heavy as you 
can, but fine.” 
I visited the “ wool depot” in Kinderhook with great 
pleasure. I venture to say that it would be difficult to 
collect seventy-five thousand pounds of nicer wool with¬ 
out making a particular selection. The manner in which 
it is washed, put up, and arranged, must make it an at¬ 
traction to manufacturers. 
I will only add that the sale of wool in this part of 
Dutchess county has been, for the best quality, not full 
blood, fifty cents per pound. 
Yours respectfully, Newton Reed. 
Amenia, Dutchess County , July, 1845. 
KILLING ALDERS. 
We publish with pleasure the following article, though 
confessedly unprepared to admit the idea of lunar influ¬ 
ence as therein expressed. The long experience of the 
writer, however, (he being, if we make no mistake in 
dates, in his ninety-fifth year 0 renders his remarks 
valuable, and justly entitled to respectful consideration. 
We should also be pleased to receive any facts from oth¬ 
ers touching the same subject. If the result of cutting 
alders on any particular day has been demonstrated to be 
more effectual in eradicating them than when cut at any 
other time, it is obviously important that it be known. 
Establish the certainty of this result, and speculation in 
regard to the cause is unnecessary. The difference in 
the durability of timber cut at different times, is undoubt¬ 
edly great. Our venerable correspondent intimates that 
he may :s prescribe” a proper mode to be pursued. We 
should be happy to hear from him. 
Mr. Tucker —In the Cultivator for June I observe, 
(page 195,) A. H. Halleck, Esq., says there is a certain 
time to cut alders to eradicate them. He might have 
added in some years, and rendered a reason. It is no new 
thing, for I have known it more than eighty years, and 
it is well known in Berkshire. My first twenty years I 
lived in Hatfield—(was Col. Partridge’s ninth of thirteen 
children.) He had a pasture, two-thirds of which was 
almost level with the mill-pond—not miry, but as fine a 
place for alders as ever was, and also excellent for grass; 
so that on leisure days alders were cut, piled and burnt; 
but grow they would, and a perpetual war was waged 
against them. One day, (say in 1756, his two hired men 
cut near an acre, and not a sprout came. My father be¬ 
lieved that it was owing to the time they were cut, but 
not noticed soon enough to be remembered. He being 
both a civil and military officer during the war with 
France for Canada, i. e., from 1755 to 1761, his house 
was ever thronged with company, and from all parts of 
the country; and he did not forget to inquire for a time 
to kill alders in his favorite horse pasture. In about two 
years, a man told him that Dr. Elliott, of Guilford, Ct., 
had, in a small treatise on husbandry said, to cut alders 
in the old (or wane) of the moon, having the sign in the 
heart, (i. e., when passing Leo,) they would bleed to 
death; and I have found if cut at that time the sap flows 
freely till they are exhausted, and no more grow. 
In 1771,1 came to Stockbridge, (a feeble stripling,) on 
account of my health; and Dr. Sargent, my friend, had 
in his twelve acre horse-pasture five acres of alders, so 
thick it was difficult to find even a horse among them; 
and since, I have owned four lots with alders in them, 
and all were years ago destroyed by one cutting at the 
aforesaid time. So long ago as when we had but one 
newspaper in Berkshire, I advertised that if people 
would cut off their alders on a certain day, I assured 
their destruction. Some considered it a trick, and even 
called me an impostor. Some, however, knew me, and 
the result was that plenty of alders were cut with the 
desired effect. 
Yours, &c., O. P. 
P. S. It is lamentable that there is no more attention 
paid to cutting timber and fencing-stuff. It is but a little 
more work to make a fence of wood that will last fifty 
or sixty years, than one that will rot down in twelve or 
fifteen years. I may, perhaps, prescribe. 
Stockbridge, Mass., June, 1845. 
SELF-ACTING PUMP. 
Luther Tucker, Esq,.— It is with much pleasure 
that I comply with the request of a gentleman connected 
with your journal, (Mr. Howard) in furnishing a few 
statements with regard to a new self-acting pump which 
I have lately set in operation, and which, I think, pro¬ 
mises to be of some value to the public; and to no por¬ 
tion of it more so than to agriculturists. Notwithstand¬ 
ing the multitude of ingenious contrivances which have 
hitherto been devised for obtaining water for economical 
and ornamental purposes, the most valuable is the old 
and simple plan of bringing it from some neighboring 
spring or water-course which flows upon a higher level 
than that on which the supply is needed. This method, 
although frequently attended with considerable expense, 
is almost universally adopted where it is practicable, in 
preference to the best constructed pumps for raising wa¬ 
ter from a lower level to a higher. The situations, 
however, where this plan can be adopted are not nume¬ 
rous, except in mountainous regions. Buildings occu¬ 
pied as dwellings, or otherwise, except in such places, 
are generally located on high ground, where water can¬ 
not be procured by an aqueduct or conduit pipe. In 
such places it is universally obtained from wells situated 
on such high ground, and in innumerable instances in 
the immediate vicinity of ravines and small valleys 
deeper than those wells. In such cases it is obvious that 
a syphon might be led from the bottom of a well over 
into the low ground, the current through which syphon 
would afford a mechanical power, which, if it could be 
economically applied, would be sufficient to raise a steady 
and perpetual supply of water upon the elevated level 
where it was wanted. 
These considerations induced me some months since to 
consider whether a syphon might not be so constructed 
as to discharge water at the summit of its curve, that is, 
at the highest point in the pipe of which it should be 
constructed. The idea at first appeared somewhat ab¬ 
surd, as those who are acquainted with the operation of 
the common syphon may suppose, inasmuch as in no 
point of a syphon is there so strong a resistance to any 
force tending to divert a portion of the enclosed fluid 
from the pipe than at the summit of the curve. The 
problem, however, is solved, and the contrivance which 
has accomplished the solution has been tested, and proved 
perfectly successful. The preponderance of the column 
of water in the longer leg of a syphon, which I have 
recently laid from a well fourteen feet deep, over into 
a neighboring ravine twenty-two feet deep, furnishes a 
sufficient mechanical power to deliver about one-third of 
all the water which enters the pipe at the bottom of the 
well, at the summit of the curve, two feet above the 
mouth of the well. The length of the pipe which goes 
down into the ravine is about ten rods, more than half 
of which distance it is laid in ground nearly level. The 
shorter leg of the syphon descends perpendicularly into 
the well, and is constructed of lead pipe of an inch cali¬ 
bre. At the summit of this pipe, and connected also 
with the pipe which passes down the hill-side, is the 
apparatus for discharging the water, of such dimensions 
that it might be enclosed in a cubical box ten inches 
square. I have omitted to mention that the pipe which 
passes into the ravine is about three-fourths the calibre 
of that which descends into the well. 
The amount of water discharged by the apparatus, 
two feet above the level of the ground at the mouth of 
the well, through a half-inch pipe with a free aperture, 
is little more than a gallon per minute. If the pipe is 
laid upon the ground, and its adjutage contracted by a jet 
tube with an aperture of one-eighth of inch in diame¬ 
ter, the jet rises seven feet and a half above the mouth 
of the well; with another jet tube of one-sixteenth of 
an inch in diameter, it rises thirteen feet; and with ano¬ 
ther of one -twentieth of an inch diameter of adjutage, 
between eighteen and nineteen feet. Indeed there is no 
definite limit to the altitude to which water might be 
raised by this method, if the size of the syphon be in¬ 
creased, and a sufficient supply of water obtained tor 
working it. 
It may appear incredible that a syphon can be so con 
