1874.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
37 
<k mm ® 9 (S©IL,»m 
About IIorse>Sliovs>. 
Who made the first horse-shoe? We do not know, 
and doubt, if any one does. We can get a pretty good 
idea of what the first one was like from the kind now ill 
use in the far East, where everything that belongs to 
farming is at the present day very much as it was in the 
time of “ Moses and the prophets.” The corn is trodden 
out by oxen just as it was in Scripture times, and if 
Adam ever did any plowing he probably used the crooked 
stick that at the present day turns the soil of the Holy 
Land. A gentleman attached to the Oriental Topographi¬ 
cal Expedition—which is engaged in surveying the Holy 
Land—recently brought us an Eastern horse-shoe. It is 
so unlike the shoes used upon our horses that we thought 
the boys and girls would like to see an engraving, which 
we give in figure 1. The shoe seems to have been beaten 
out of a piece of iron, and beaten so thin as to make a 
Fig. 1.—ORIENTAL. 
Fig. 2.—MEXICAN IIORSE-SIIOE. 
hole in the middle, which is left of an irregular shape. 
The shoe at the edges is not thicker than ordinary 
pasteboard. Of course, ahorse with so much flat iron 
on his feet would not be very sure-footed, so the nails by 
which the shoe is fastened to the hoof are made with 
very large heads. The Spaniards are not much in ad¬ 
vance of the Orientals in their farm implements, and in 
those parts of America settled by the Spaniards we find 
that no improvement has taken place for centuries. We 
give alongside of the Egyptian shoe one that we brought 
from Mexico several years ago (figure 2). This is rather 
ahead of the Egyptian affair, but looks very odd in com¬ 
parison with those we use. The Mexicans do not, as a 
general thing, shoe their horses and mules, but in a 
rocky country they are obliged to, and this is the kind of 
shoe they use. The nails by means of which the shoe is 
attached have heads which project from the surface of 
the shoe about half an inch. 
- . —-—* —- 
The Doctor’s Talks. 
ABOUT A PIICE 0 1- LIMESTONE. 
Last month I asked you to put some of your lime with 
a plenty of water in a bottle, cork it up, and let it stand. 
The liquid will look perfectly clear and quite like pure 
water, and the lime will apparently have all settled at 
the bottom. We found that limestone before it was 
burned did not dissolve in water; now does it behave any 
differently after being burned ? There looks to be as 
much lime at the bottom of the bottle as there was at 
first; but it will not do to trust to appearance. Soto find 
out whether the water is just the same as when it was 
put with the lime we must ask it questions. The eye 
tells us nothing; how is it with the taste ? Pour a little 
of the liquid out of the bottle and taste. It does not 
taste very pleasantly, but it will not hurt you to just 
taste it. This is evidently not pure water, and we infer 
that it has taken up (dissolved) some of the lime. To 
question this liquid still further you can get a few bits of 
the outer leaf of a red cabbage ; put them in a cup and 
pour boiling water over them, and when cold pour this 
cabbage tea into a glass. It will be of a bluish or violet 
color. Add a little of the water which came from your 
lime—lime-water we will call it—and see what happens. 
Your cabbage liquid turns at once of a beautiful green. 
You might further prove that the water had dissolved 
some lime by pouring some of it into a clean saucer and 
placing this on the cooler part of a stove, where it will 
gradually dry up or evaporate. When the water is all 
gone, and the saucer quite dry, you will find a film or 
scum of something upon the inside of the saucer. This 
film Is so very thin that you will conclude that the water 
has dissolved but very little lime, and you will be right. 
Although the water has dissolved all the lime that it pos¬ 
sibly can, the quantity Is only about nine grains in a pint 
of water. Or to put it in another way, one part of lime 
requires over 700 parts of water to dissolve it. Two 
ordinary barrels of water are not able to dissolve one 
pound of lime. When water or any other liquid has dis¬ 
solved all of a solid that it can the solution is said to be 
saturated. We can have a saturated solution of lime by 
using, as we see, a very little. A pint of water is 
saturated with about nine grains of lime, but it would 
take five or six ounces of common salt to so saturate a 
pint of water that it could dissolve no more; and if we 
dissolve sugar a pint of water will need about twice its 
weight of sugar before it is saturated. Although water 
at the ordinary temperature dissolves so little lime, boil¬ 
ing water dissolves still less. When you hear “ lime- 
water” spoken of you will know that it means this clear 
solution of lime in water. When lime is stirred up with 
water it makes a milky mixture,' such as is used in white¬ 
washing, which is often called “cream of lime” or “milk 
of lime. This is, however, only a mixture, and not a 
solution, for if it is allowed to stand all the lime, except 
the little that water can dissolve, will settle to the bottom 
of the vessel that holds it. Now, there are two more ex¬ 
periments that I wish you to try with your 
lime-water. Dissolve a small bit of soap in 
water, a piece as big as a bean in half a teacup¬ 
ful of water. When the soap is dissolved add 
some lime-water. You will see that a curdy 
matter will form which will not dissolve in 
water. Our hard soaps are made of soda and 
fat; they are soda soaps, and these dissolve 
in water. When you add lime-water to a soap 
of this kind the lime, so to speak, takes the 
fat away from the soda and forms a lime soap 
which is not soluble. You see now why some 
waters are called “ hard.” They contain lime 
in some form, which they dissolve while in 
the earth, and when we undertake to wash 
our hands in them with ordinary soap there hap¬ 
pens just what did when yon poured lime- 
water into a solution of soap—a lime-soap 
forms, which sticking to the hands makes 
_ them feel very unpleasantly. The second 
experiment is to put into a tumbler or wine-glass 
some of your lime-water, and then with a straw, pipe¬ 
stem, or other such tube breathe into the lime-water— 
that is to take a full breath, and then let the air from 
your lungs pass through the straw or other tube in bub¬ 
bles through the lime-water. Before your breath has 
passed for many seconds into the lime-water you will see 
that it is clouded ; it will soon become so milky that ycu 
can not see through it. If yon set it aside a white pow¬ 
der will fall to the bottom of the glass. You will wonder 
what this means. What can there be in your breath that 
should so disturb and cloud the clear lime-water? Before 
we answer this let us go back a bit. In November I told 
you that one way to test lime-stone was to powder it and 
pour vinegar over it, when small bubbles would rise. 
Again, last month you were told than when limestone 
was strongly heated to make lime of it it lost almost half 
its weight. What did it lose in the shape of bubbles 
when vinegar was put to it, and what did it lose when 
heated? The loss in both cases was the same—carbonic 
acid. I can not stop to tell you more about carbonic 
acid now than that it is an jnvisible gas, in which a flame 
can not burn, and in which an animal can not live. So 
poisonous is it, that when air is mixed with only a mod¬ 
erate share of this gas illness or even death may be pro¬ 
duced. When coal or wood is burned this gas is formed 
and mixes with the air. When limestone is heated or 
“burned,” as it is called, to make liine, large quantities 
of this gas are given off, and it forms in other ways; so 
a very little, about ‘/soon of Its bulk, is always present 
in the air. Though in large quantities it is injurious to 
animals it is needed by plants. They can not grow with¬ 
out it. They are constantly taking it up from the air. 
Animals are, on the other hand, constantly sending it 
out of their lungs; it is the way in which much of our 
food is used up, this forming of carbonic acid. W T hen 
you breathed into the lime-water the carbonic acid of 
your breath united with the lime to form carbonate qf 
lime, which is just what the limestone from which it was 
made was. But we must now leave the limestone—but 
not I trust without many of you having found something 
to think of. The Doctor. 
Something about Gunpowder. 
Boys have a great fancy for gunpowder, and their in¬ 
terest in the subject is especially lively early in the 
month of July. The father of_one boy says he likes to 
gratify his boys upon the Fourth of July, but he finds 
gunpowder rather expensive, and he wishes to know if 
we can not tell him the proportions of niter (saltpeter), 
charcoal, and sulphur, so that he can make his own pow¬ 
der. As the answer to this question will Interest boys in 
general, we put it here. The proportions of the ingre¬ 
dients of gunpowder are about 16 parts each of charcoal 
and sulphur to 100 parts of niter. If these are powdered 
very fine and mixed, they would have all that gunpowder 
contains, but the firing of it would produce no bang at 
all but only a rather slow-burning Jizz. You see it re¬ 
quires something besides the sulphur, charcoal, and 
niter—the value of the powder depends upon the mak¬ 
ing—so we must advise this gentleman and boys in gen¬ 
eral to give up the idea of making their own powder, as, 
aside from the danger of the matter, they can not suc¬ 
ceed without going to great expense. But perhaps you 
will like to know how it is done at the powder factories ? 
Well, the ingredients are reduced to the finest possible 
powder by being put into revolving drums with several 
hundred pounds of balls or bullets, which, as the drum 
turns, fall and roll and grind the stuff as fine as dust. 
Then enough water is added to make a paste. This paste 
is put between cloths and put under a powerful press, 
and comes out in cakes. These cakes, when dried, are 
broken up by stamping-mills, and the grains of different 
sizes separated by means of sieves. All the dust powder 
is sifted out, and the different sizes of powder separated 
according to fineness. Then the best kinds are put into 
a drum which revolves, and the grains rub against one 
another and give that handsome polish seen in the best 
rifle powder. Ordinary cannon powder is coarse com¬ 
pared with that used for rifles and shot-guns; and that * 
made for the enormous cannon now in our forts and 
monitors— “baby-waiters,” the sailors call them—is so 
coarse that you might, take it for lumps of coal, though 
you might find out the difference if you undertook to 
kindle a Are with it. The powder is made coarse for 
these large guns, so as to burn comparatively slowly. If 
it went off as “ quick as a flash,” the gun would proba¬ 
bly “go off” too, instead of the ball. 
A Gam** for a Winter’s .Evening'. 
Perhaps it is not exactly a game, but it might be easily 
made into one. I don’t know what to call it either, un¬ 
less it be a “Journey by the Fireside,” or it may be the 
"Home Encyclopedia.” The idea is this: Some one 
selects an object, any common one whatever, and 
questions the others. Take, for illustration, the first, 
thing before me—my lamp. See what a lot of 
questions may come out of this. What is the lamp 
made of? What, is brass ? What is zinc? Where does 
it come from ? In what shape is it found ? What 
color ? Does it. melt, easily or not ? What is it used for be¬ 
sides to make brass? So the same series or longer of 
questions about the copper. The base of the lamp has 
lead run into it to make it heavy, and a whole lot more 
can be learned about that. Then the chimney and shade 
are glass, and probably but very few can tell much about 
so common a thing as that. The wick—that is, of course, 
cotton. What is cotton ? what part of the plant? where 
is it grown, and all about it? why is the wick made hol¬ 
low, in the form of a cylinder ? Then the oil—there is 
quite a story about that. Here is a single article in the 
room that would keep a lot of bright boys and girls 
profitably at work a whole evening. Such a looking-up 
of dictionaries and other books before some of the 
questions could be properly answered 1 and no doubt 
some of the older people would find themselves 
at their “wits ends ” to answer all the questions that 
could be put. I hope some of the boys and girls 
will try this, for they will find out in the first place how 
little they really know about the articles they handle 
and use every day. and in the second place they will 
find that these silent common things, like some silent 
common people, have a history if they can be only made 
to tell it. At least so thinks your Old Uncle. 
■--—»«»■—---■ 
Aunt Sue’s I’uzzle-lSox. 
ANAGRAMS. 
6. Men cram beer. 
7. Hence no rice. 
8. Scald no one. 
9. Tote in a printer. 
10. Sneer assent. 
Gus and Joe. 
cross-words. 
1. My first is in bird but not in owl. 
My next is in duck but not in fowl. 
My third is in fat but not in lard. 
My fourth is in soft but not in hard. 
My fifth is in meat but not in bone. 
My sixth is in slate but not in stone. 
My seventh is in bowl but not in plate. 
My whole is a city in New York State. 
Claude. 
2. My first is in sermon but not in text. 
My next is in worried but not in vexed. 
My third is in new but not in old. 
My fourth is in heat but not in cold. 
My fifth is in sturdy but not in bold. 
My whole we all strive for, I am told. 
N. Travis. 
1. Nay, quit it. 
2. Seal soup. 
3. Burn slate. 
4. A red mile. 
5. Tin cod faces. 
