44 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
nerally than in France. But then, and in all time since, good agricul¬ 
tural practices have remained in the particular countries where they 
were established, without being spread abroad. Now, novelties carry 
no alarm with them—and in the last twenty years, liming has made 
more progress than in the two preceding centuries. 
Young- Men’s Department. 
FROM A FATHER TO HIS SON.—No. Y. 
METHOD IN BUSINESS. 
Farm accounts demands your early attention. Keep a daily journal, 
in which note down,—1. All your farm expenses, and all you receive 
for its products. This will enable you to determine your farm income. 
2. Note down your family expenses. Subtract these, at the end of the 
year, from the income of the farm. The balance will be your annual 
nett profit. 3, Keep also an account of the expense bestowed on each 
crop, the contents of the ground being ascertained, and the lot num¬ 
bered, and of its products and profits. This account may be posted at 
the close of the year, and will instruct you what crops are best adapt¬ 
ed to your soil, which are most profitable, what rotation is best, and 
enable you to vary your practice so as best to promote your interest 
and the general improvement of your farm, 4- Note down the cost, 
increase and sale of your farm stock, and its products in cheese, but¬ 
ter, wool, meat, &c. This will show you the relative profits of each. 
These two last items may be posted from your daily journal, if the 
fields and animals are sufficiently designated. And 5. Put down 
daily, the business and ordinary transactions of the farm, and any oc¬ 
currences that maybe deemed worth remembering, as matters of refer- 
ence. All this will occupy you ten or fifteen minutes each evening, 
and when familiar, it will be fonnd an agreeable task, and it will as¬ 
sist you very much in regulating your farm concerns. The book which 
I use has three double columns for figures, in one of which, are car¬ 
ried out my farm expenses-—in another my family expenses, and in the 
third, the moneys received for farm products. A few minutes, at the 
end of the year, suffices to ascertain their aggregate amounts. 
Farm tools and implements should be substantially made, of good 
pattern, kept in order for use, and, when not in use, protected from 
the weather. A slight made implement is likely to break, and occa¬ 
sion a loss of time in getting it repaired. A bad pattern is always 
dearer in the end, whatever be its nominal price, than a good one. 
“It will do well enough for the present ,” should never satisfy you. 
The loss in putting implements in order, at the moment they are 
wanted, often causes serious delay. Besides, they can be put in order 
at leisure times, or during stormy weather. Exposure to the weather 
soon impairs the value of the best tools. Every implement and tool 
should have a place assigned for it, where it should be deposited, 
when not in use. It is better to spend ten minutes to carry a tool to 
its place, than to spend sixty, as is often the case, in looking for it 
when it is out of its place. These rules preclude you from habitually 
lending your tools. There is nothing more vexing than to have to send 
through a neighborhood for one’s tools, when we are in immediate 
want of them. A good farmer will seldom borrow—a bad one will sel¬ 
dom buy, as long as he can borrow. Of the tools not in common use 
on a farm, I commend to you particularly the hay or straw cutter. It 
will enable you to save one-quarter of your fodder. The cultivator 
will soon save its cost in the economy of labor it effects, in drilled or 
hoed crops, and, in most cases, is a better implement in this culture 
than the plough. A revolving horse-rake will earn its cost in a season; 
and a roller is indispensable in good farming. The drill-barrow, the 
corn-sheller, and the potato-hook are also useful and economical upon 
most farms, and the threshing machine upon farms where grain is ex¬ 
tensively cultivated. 
Early rising .—The farmer’s business, more perhaps than any other, 
prospers by the habit of early rising. As his labors generally termi¬ 
nate with the day; there is sufficient time for rest A farmer’s family 
should be abroad, or up, by five o’clock, at all seasons. The master 
should set the example. Practice will soon render the habit a desira¬ 
ble one. 
INTERESTING FACTS IN CHEMISTRY. 
The creation or destruction of any element is not to be found in the 
operations of nature. The numerous phenomena of composition and 
decomposition, which take place upon the surface of the globe, pre¬ 
sent only changes of combinations, which are formed according to fix¬ 
ed, eternal and unchangable laws. Thus nature is regenerated, with¬ 
out being impoverished, and matter experiences only those changes 
which are produced uniformly and periodically, especially in organized 
bodies.— Chaptal. 
A vegetable substance is always acid, whenever the oxygen it con¬ 
tains is to the hydrogen in a greater proportion than in water;—it is 
always resinous, or oily, or spirituous, whenever it contains oxygen in 
a smaller proportion to the hydrogen that exists in water;—and it is 
neither acid nor resinotis, but is either saccharine of mucilaginous, of 
analogous to woody fibre or starch, whenever the oxygen and hydro¬ 
gen in it are in the same proportions as in water.-—Gay Lussac. 
The elements, or matters, of which plants are composed, are ahnost 
wholly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, Whenever the plant dies, and 
decomposes or rots, these elements partially or wholly separate, and en¬ 
ter into new combinations, either animal, vegetable, mineral or aeriform. 
According to the laws of nature, animal and vegetable life are both 
very much influenced by the temperature in which they exist; we 
therefore find different kinds of vegetables, and a different race of ani¬ 
mals, appropriated to the different climates of the earth.— Parke. We 
should, therefore, study to give to exotics the temperature and soil, as 
far as practicable, in which they flourish in their native clime. 
As evaporation produces cold, condensation always occasions heat 5 
that is, caloric is always evolved from those bodies which have under¬ 
gone any degree of condensation. In the one case, caloric is absorb¬ 
ed ; in the other, it is set at liberty,— Idem. 
By the collision of flint and steel, so much caloric is disengaged, that 
the metallic particles which are struck off, are actually melted thereby. 
This is evident from their being always found in a spherical form. 
If iron filings and sulphur be mixed into a paste with water, a sul- 
phuret of iron will be formed, which decomposes the water and ab¬ 
sorbs oxygen so rapidly, that the mixture takes fire, even though it be 
buried under ground. 
If the bulb of a thermometer be immersed in a mixture of snow and com¬ 
mon salt, the mercury will fall to at least 32° below the freez ng point 
of water; and if the instrument be then removed from that mixture, 
and put simply into a mass of snow, the mercury will be so much 
heated by the change, as to rise 32°; so that snow, which appears to 
the hand to be totally void of all heat, contains sufficient to raise the 
thermometer many degrees.* 
Water not only becomes converted into steam by heat, hut when it 
is received into the atmosphere, if the air be warm, it becomes so far 
changed by its union with the matter of heat as to be perfectly invisi¬ 
ble. In this state, it occupies a space 1,400 times greater than its ordi¬ 
nary liquid state. The vapor arising from boiling water, is visible 
only in consequence of its being partially condensed by a cold atmos¬ 
phere, as may be demonstrated by causing water to boil in a Florence 
flask, over a lamp ; for, in this case, the steam within the neck of the 
case will be found to be entirely invisible. 
Bishop Watson found, by experiment, that when there had been no 
rain for a considerable time, and the earth was dried by the parching- 
heat of summer, it still dispersed into the air, above 1,600 gallons of 
water to the acre, during twelve hours of a summer’s day. 
The ocean loses many millions of gallons of water hourly, by eva¬ 
poration. The Mediterranean is said to lose more by evaporation, 
than it receives from the Nile, the Tiber, the Rhone, the Po, and all 
the other rivers that fall into it. The water is conveyed by the winds, 
to every part of the continents: these it fertilizes in the form of rain, 
and afterwards supplies the rivers, which flow again into the sea. 
This is one of those continual circulations whereby all matter is made 
to subserve various purposes, which have been devised by the Crea¬ 
tor for the promotion of his beneficent designs. 
“The beauteous sun 
Lifts the bright clouds sublime, and spreads them thin, 
Fleecy and white, o’er all surrounding heaven.” 
Evaporation is, in this climate, more than four times as much in sum¬ 
mer as in winter. Heat facilitates all solutions; and the greater the 
difference between the temperature of the air and the evaporating sur¬ 
face, the greater will be the evaporation. 
This principle of evaporation not only is the cause of all rain, mist, 
dew, snow, &c. hut it moderates the effect of the sun’s heat, by carry¬ 
ing off an immense quantity of caloric, (or heat,) in combination with 
the watery vapors. Were it not for the cold produced by evaporation, 
we should faint under any great bodily exertion, or die by excessive 
heat. But Nature, always provident, has furnished man with a fluid, 
which, insensibly prespiring and becoming evaporated from the surface 
of the body, is the vehicle which carries off the superabundant heat, as 
fast as it is generated. Cold-blooded animals, whose temperature is 
regulated by the medium in which they live, never perspire; but man, 
who was intended to live in a variety of climates and designed for ac¬ 
tive exertion, is thus preserved from the effects of heat, which would 
otherwise be destructive. The blood of an inhabitant of the torrid 
zone, is no warmer than that of an inhabitant of the mountains of 
Lapland; which may be proved by placing a thermometer upon the 
tongue or under the arm. The various means which have been thus 
adopted, for the promotion of our convenience and comfort, are full 
of instruction, and highly gratifying to every reflecting mind. 
# Sheep, fed with salt on the snow, are known to be afflicted with sore 
mouths. Their mouths become absolutely frozen by the intense cold produc¬ 
ed by this mixture of salt and snow. This is a serious admonition to stock- 
farmers. 
