96 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[March, 
farmers alluded to, is now (January) milking 19 
head, chiefly full-blood Ayrshires, and most of 
them of his own raising. His product of milk 
is 200 quarts per day. Mr. H. S. Collins milks 
Ayrshires, Jerseys, and grades, and is changing 
his herd as first as he can raise Ayrshire cows 
to take the place of others. 
Short-liorn breeders claim that there is no 
reason why Short-horns should not be as good 
milkers as Ayrshires. There is but one reason 
we know of; that is, they haye not been bred 
for milk alone for many years, and have been 
bred for beef alone, while both the amount and 
quality of the milk have been disregarded. 
• . - j ■■ i h'i i u g 1 — 
Digging Wells in Sand and Quicksand. 
We must have water; springs will sometimes 
go dry, cisterns give out, wells fail, and the 
more persistent the flow of water is during try¬ 
ing drouths, the more valuable,—the nearer in¬ 
valuable—becomes the spring or well. 
The inquiries published in the last volume of 
the Agriculturist in regard to the best mode of 
sinking wells in sand have brought out numer¬ 
ous responses, which, now that the frost is com¬ 
ing out of the ground, we give to our readers. 
The good old way of sinking a wooden base-curb 
and building up a stone or brick one upon it, is 
described in slightly varying terms by several 
correspondents. T. S. Wetlierbee, Hammond- 
ton, N. J., writes the following: 
“Wooden or plank curbs should never be 
used if they can be avoided, for the water will 
Fig. 1.—BASE-CURB OP RECTANGULAR PLANKS. 
vary in bight in the best of wells, and a por¬ 
tion of the crib will at times be exposed to the 
air. Decay must follow, and on the rise of 
the water, the bad effects of the rotten wood 
will soon be perceived both in its taste and 
healthfulness. Where a stratum of quicksand 
overlays the water, and the well can be dug, it 
should be sunk just to the water and the 
bottom made perfectly smooth. Then cut two 
circles of board four inches wide, nail them 
firmly together in such a manner as to make a 
strong rim; place the circle level in the bottom 
of the well, lay brick in cement upon the 
rim and proceed to build the brick work, filling 
every crevice with cement, if you wish to have a 
perfect well. Build your wall thus to the bight 
above the surface of the ground that you desire 
to have depth of water in the well; then sink the 
•whole by digging out directly in the centre. The 
sand will flow in equally from all sides and the 
wall will settle evenly. When sunk to the 
required depth, brick up the well to the desired 
bight above the ground; at all events, sufficiently 
to turn off the surface water. One barrel of 
cement is sufficient for a well thirty or forty 
feet deep." Use hard bricks, and if the work be 
well done it will be done cheaply.” 
Mr. A. F. Damon, of Philadelphia, describes 
the manner in which the South Americans dig 
their -wells. This is substantially as described 
by Mr. Wetherbee, except that a rim is nailed 
upon the base-curb and the bricks laid up inside 
the rim, and the brick-laying goes on altogether 
upon the surface, the base-curb being laid flat 
and the brick-curbing laid upon it, at the same 
time that it is settled into the ground by 
shoveling out the sand from within the circle. 
He says: “Any one wishing to dig a well 
gives the di¬ 
ameter to a 
brick - maker, 
who furnish¬ 
es him with 
bricks which 
are the seg¬ 
ments of a cyl¬ 
inder of the required size. This plan was 
adopted by the Spaniards from the Aborigines, 
who excelled in pottery work, and whose 
wells are still in existence.” These bricks 
used to be quite in vogue in this country 
for wells; but of late, we believe, bricks of the 
ordinary size and shape (8x4x2 inches) are 
used, a little more care in laying the latter 
being requisite to secure an exact circle. 
Figure 1 represents the base-curb, somewhat 
broader than described by Mr. Wetlierbee, with 
the addition of the rim described by Mr. Damon. 
The circles are made of segments of convenient 
size, cut from plank and pinned together, break¬ 
ing joints with treenails. Two thicknesses of 
2-inch plank, 8 inches wide, will make a base- 
curb strong enough to settle evenly in almost 
every soil, even where stones of considerable 
size occur. Figure 2 shows a base-curb made of 
eight pieces of plank, first pinned together, and 
then trimmed with a saw, axe, or drawing knife, 
to the proper shape. In laying the bricks, 
they will require a bit of plank to be laid in for 
a support, at four points in the circle. Figure 3 
shows a 2 x 2-incli strip sawed full of kerfs, 
in order to bend evenly to make the rim. 
Mr. K. Horner, of Tpsilanti, Mich., describes 
much the same process as Mr. Wetlierbee, but 
says, when the well is dug to the quicksand or to 
the surface of the water “ then, being sure that 
everything necessary, such as bricks, pails for bal¬ 
ing, if necessary, and sufficient help that is not 
afraid of exercise,are at hand,and all things ready, 
we begin to move the quicksand about the size of 
the ring and throw out what we can to advan¬ 
tage, and then put down the ring and begin to 
lay the brick as fast as possible, and also to dig 
out the sand from the inside with along handled 
shovel, and never let it rest for a moment from 
the time the first brick is laid till we get down 
as far as we wish. Keep adding bricks as it 
goes down. The more brick the more power 
effiffigffiMSd wt is iT tiiis 
Fig. 3.— rim of curb. way we never 
have any trouble, and all the wood in the water 
is the ring on which the brick is laid.” 
Cement Tile Wells. —Precisely the same 
principle is carried out in the modern cement 
tile wells, which are greatly approved where 
the soil and distance to water are adapted to 
their use. Cement tiles are made of various 
sizes and shapes for sewers and drains. The 
one we represent in fig. 3 is of the size sometimes 
employed for wells; namely, 5 feet long by 
2 feet inside diameter. This gives room for a 
man, (a small man, probably) to stand in it and 
fill a bucket with sand. We are curious to 
witness the process, having recently seen one of 
them in operation, where it was manifestly supe¬ 
rior to any other kind of curbing. Where it can 
be employed it makes the cheapest, simplest and 
most durable lining that can be devised. The 
pipes are made with one end narrowed and the 
other expanded—like a mortise and tenon. Mr. 
A. E. Smith, of Hew 
Haven Co., Ct., writes 
as follows : “ A kind of 
tile made in sections 3 
feet long, 2 feet in di¬ 
ameter, with rabbetted 
ends to lock together, is 
used in this vicinity. A 
hole is dug and a section 
placed in the ground; 
then one man gets inside 
with a scoop and fills 
the sand into buckets, 
which are drawn out by 
a man at the top, using 
any simple rigging that 
may suggest itself. As 
fast as a section is low¬ 
ered another is put on, and so on until water is 
obtained, when the well is completed. I be¬ 
lieve the cost in this vicinity is $5.00 per sec¬ 
tion, and two men will put down in easy dig¬ 
ging thirty feet in two days, making a very cheap 
and durable well. Of course it can only be used 
where the digging is easy, and I should think 
was just the thing for a well in quicksand.” 
Home-made Superphosphate from Bones, 
A correspondent who makes a superphos¬ 
phate from broken bones has this formula: 
“ Add to the crushed bones i their weight of oil 
of vitriol and } their weight of water. A con¬ 
venient vessel for mixing the ingredients in an 
old whale oil cask sawed in two. These casks 
are usually made of white oak and yellow pine 
and bound with very stout iron hoops, and last 
a long time for this purpose. Any wooden ves¬ 
sel or vat made of good timber would answer 
the purpose. The breaking of bones is work 
that I always have upon the slate when there is 
nothing else to be done. I have a spare shed 
with a hard dirt bottom and a piece of rock in 
the middle for an anvil. The big bones and 
hard joints are crushed on this with a heavy 
steel sledge, and the softer and smaller bones are 
pounded with a lighter hammer. Of course it 
costs a good deal to work bones up in this way, 
and perhaps it would not pay to buy bones 
at 15 or 20 dollars a ton for this purpose. 
But I hire boys to pick them up about the 
neighboring village for 25 cents a barrel or less, 
and get them of the butcher for about the sam« 
price. I use these broken bones very freely in 
planting trees, and the surplus I work up in the 
oil casks with the oil of vitriol. I put 
the finest of the bones into the tub, then 
pour in the water, and add the oil of vitriol 
last. I stir the mass with a short pole 
briskly at the time of mixing- and several times 
a day as long as it remains in the tub. It takes 
much longer for such coarse bones to dissolve 
than for bone-dust; if I do not wish to use the 
fertilizer immediately I allow the mass to remain 
two or three weeks. I then take out the paste 
and what of the bones cure left, and mix them in 
the compost heap which has been made for that 
purpose, if I desire a fertilizer for spreading 
CURBING. 
