THE 
certainly proposes to accomplish wonders. In the first 
place, it “ skims the surface 5 ” secondly, trenches the 
land; thirdly, subsoils the ground to any required depth; 
fourthly, it will perform either of these operations com¬ 
bined or separately; fifthly, it requires no skill in hold¬ 
ing, and no “ balks ” can ever be made; sixthly, it 
buries all vegetable matter and weeds; seventhly, it 
may be used on land wet or dry; and eighthly, it 
trenches land at one quarter of the ordinary expense 
by hand. This plow appears not to have been tried as 
yet, although commended by an English agricultural 
journal of high character; but we confess so many won¬ 
derful qualities partake largely of the marvellous, and 
remind us of the extraordinary quack medicine, which 
not only cured the different diseases, but possessed many 
other very useful properties, such as restoring a rent 
boot, doubling the milk of cows, causing hens to lay 
with great rapidity, preventing decay in fence posts, 
preventing horses from balking, rendering railroads 
proof against collisions, making steamboat boilers safe 
from explosion, besides increasing the speed of the 
boat, &c. 
Another attempt, not so successful as this claims to 
be, was made some years ago, at the Bristol exhibition 
of the English Agricultural Society, of a digging ma¬ 
chine, constructed simply of a wooden roller set spi¬ 
rally with spoon-shaped spikes, so as to dig up the land 
when drawn over it. Unfortunately, the first trial was 
made on the fair ground, and instead of digging, it 
gathered soil among the teeth as it proceeded, till the 
whole became an immense cylindrical mass of earth, in 
which the teeth were buried and hidden. That, of 
course, ended the history of this digger. 
Thousands of very ingenious men have labored for 
years in improving the old-fashioned soil-inverter, the 
plow ; and possibly nothing better than this implement 
will ever be contrived; but ingenuity in other diections 
is certainly worthy of encouragement. At the present 
time, a trenching machine is greatly needed, that shall 
not require six or eight horses, as the largest subsoil 
and trench plows now do, but where one or two horses 
may be set to work and turn up the subsoil and throw 
under the surface, with all the perfection of finish ac¬ 
complished by hand labor, and with one quarter of the 
expense. ——♦— 
Second Growth of Timber. 
Experience has proved the most profitable way of 
managing forests to be the complete cutting off of all 
trees, so far as the clearing goes, and allowing the new 
growth to come up evenly and all together. But it has 
become an important question when to cut off this se¬ 
cond growth, so as to afford the most rapid returns. 
The Salisbury Iron Company has several thousand 
acres of land, reserved exclusively for supplying their 
own charcoal. Erom the experience of sixty years, 
they have ascertained, the most profitable period for 
cutting to be once in about sixteen years. It has been 
found that this yielded equal to an annual interest on 
$16 to $20 per acre, in a rough and not rich soil, re¬ 
mote from a wood or timber market. 
How to have Plenty of Water. 
Pure, clear water, forming, as it does, at the same 
moment, both the emblem and embodiment of refresh¬ 
ment and comfort, is looked upon as a vital element of 
satisfactory existence, by all who hate dirt, parched 
lips, dusty lungs, stratified deposits on the skin, and 
parti-colored linen. It also forms a most agreable class 
of pictures for the eye, in the form of placid sheets, 
bubbling brooks, sprinkling jets, and flashing foun¬ 
tains ; and through the ear, it gives us the music of 
cascades, the thunder of cataracts, and the grave roar 
of ocean surges. 
It is no wonder that all are ready to labor for and 
welcome so agreeable a companion. The large cities 
have brought it many miles in hewn masonry, at a cost 
of millions, that they may syringe their streets, feed 
their baths, and keep a ready antidote for the incipi¬ 
ent conflagration. The country resident longs for the 
termination of the parching drouth, when drenching 
rains shall fill his cisterns, replenish his failing well, 
and set the brooks in motion. Many are looking with 
envy at some rare and “lucky” neighbor, who hap¬ 
pens to have an unfailing spring; and others, as we 
have often witnessed, placing the water hogshead on 
the ox-sled, proceed to drag their needed supply from 
a distance of one to three miles, as the case may be, 
and as they can get it from the pond, creek, or some 
better-supplied risident. We have positively seen a 
wealthy farmer drawing rain water a mile, after hav¬ 
ing allowed five times the amount he ever would have 
needed to run to w r aste immediately before his eyes; 
and we venture to assert that not one farmer in a hun¬ 
dred who has suffered from a want of water during the 
present year’s severe drouth, has not committed a simi¬ 
lar waste, though perhaps sometimes less in degree. 
The great mass of country residents seem to have no 
more conception of the enormous floods of clear, pure 
rain water, that annually pour off of the roofs of their 
dwellings, wood-houses, barns, sheds, and other out¬ 
buildings, than if they had never heard of such a huge 
watering-pot as the clouds in the sky. If all the rain 
which falls in the northern states within a year, should 
remain upon the surface of the earth without sinking 
into it or running off, it would form an average depth 
of water of about three feet. In the southern states, it 
would be more; within the American tropics, it would 
amount to about ten feet; and near Bombay, in Asia, 
to twenty-five feet. 
Every inch of rain that falls on a roof, yields two 
barrels for each space ten feet square; and seventy-two 
barrels are yielded by the annual rain in this climate, 
on a similar surface. A barn thirty by forty feet, yields 
annually 864 barrels—that is, enough for more than 
two barrels a day, for every day in the year. Many 
of our medium landholders have, however, at least five 
times that amount of roofing on their farmeries and 
dwellings, yielding annually more than four thousand 
barrels of rain water, or about twelve barrels or one 
hundred and fifty ordinary pailfuls , daily. A very 
small portion of this great quantity is caught in the 
