Part 24

Hardy farm-horses may even rough out the winter without blanketing or any other care than is necessary to supply good food and enough of it. But carriage horses, and those highly prized for the saddle—aristocratic horses—should be more carefully groomed. It is not wise to blanket a horse at all, unless it can be always done. If he is liable to change hands; to be off on journeys under circumstances in which he cannot be blanketed at night, it will be better not to begin it.

Winter is a good time to kill off spirited horses. They are easily run down by a smashing sleigh-ride pace. Boys and girls, buzzing in a double sleigh like a hive of bees, think that the horses enjoy themselves, at the exhilarating pace of six or eight miles an hour, as much as they do. But this is not ordinarily the worst of it. The horse stands out, after a trip of ten or fifteen miles, at a post for an hour or two until thoroughly chilled; then home he races, and goes into the stable, steaming with sweat, to stand without blankets all night. Horses catch cold as much as men do. And a horse-cold is just as bad as a human cold. As there has been some difficulty, in the construction of fanning mills, to gain a strong enough current of wind, we would advise the builders of them to study the construction of a good stable.

WINTER NIGHTS FOR READING.

As the winter is a season of comparative leisure, it is the time for farmers to study. It is a good time for them to make themselves acquainted with the nature of soils, of manures, of vegetable organization—or structural botany. Farmers are liable to rely wholly upon their own experience, and to despise science. Book-men are apt to rely on scientific theories, and nothing upon practice. If these two tendencies would only court and marry each other, what a hopeful family would they rear! How nice it would look to see in the papers:

MARRIED.—By Philosophical Wisdom, Esq., Mr. Practical Experience, to Miss Sober Science. [We will stand godfather to all the children.]

FEATHERS.

The quality of feathers depends on their strength, elasticity and cleanness; and these, again, depend upon the condition of the bird, its health, food, and the time of plucking its feathers. Down is the term applied to under-feathers—most abundant in water fowl, and in those especially which live in cold latitudes, being designed to protect them from wet and cold. The eider-down, from the eider-duck, is of the most repute. It is brought from extreme northern latitudes, and is used for coverings to beds, rather than for beds themselves, as, by being slept upon, it loses its elasticity.

Poultry feathers, as those of turkeys, ducks, and chickens, if assorted and the coarse ones rejected, afford very good beds; but they are not so elastic as geese-feathers.

Everybody knows that live geese-feathers are the best. Every one does not think of the reason; which, as it is the key to the art of having good feathers, we shall propound.

So long as a bird is alive, the feathers are as much an object of nutrition as the flesh, the bones, or any other part of the body.

When dead, put them into hot water to make the feathers come easy. In pulling, take out large handfuls at a time, so as to have scraps of meat and shreds of skin adhere to the quill; let them lie for several days in wet heaps to ferment a little. Then dry them suddenly by violent heat, cram them into the bed-tick, and jump on, and if you have not an odorous bed, and, in a month or two, a bedful of visitors seeking food, then there is no truth in the laws of nature.

The care of beds is not understood, often, by even good housewives. When a bed is freshly made it often smells strong. Constant airing, will, if the feathers are good, and only new, remove the scent.

A bed in constant use should be invariably beaten and shaken up daily, to enable the feathers to retain their elasticity.

It should lie after it is shaken up, for two or three hours a day, in a well ventilated room. The human body is constantly giving off a perspiration; and at night more than usual, from the relaxed condition of the skin. The bed will become foul from this cause if not well aired. If the bed is in a room which cannot be spared for such a length of time, it should be put out to air two full days in the week.

In airing beds, the sun should never shine directly upon them. It is air, not heat, that they need. We have seen beds lying on a roof where the direct and reflected rays of the sun had full power, and the feathers, without doubt, were stewing, and the oil in the quill becoming rancid; so that the bed smells worse after its roasting than before. Always air beds in the shade, and, if possible, in cool and windy days. And now, if any of our attentive housewife-readers, and we have not a few, are disposed to reward us for all this advice, let them give us a bed to sleep on, when we next visit them, made of growing feathers, from live and healthy geese, carefully picked, well cured, daily shaken up and thoroughly aired; and if we do not dream that the owner is an angel, it will be because we are too much occupied in sound sleeping.

NAIL UP YOUR BUGS.

“The words of the wise are as goads and as nails fastened by masters of assemblies.”—SOLOMON.

After a great pother about canker worms, peach-tree worms, and other audacious robber-worms; after smoke, salt, tar, and tansy, bands of wool, cups of oil, lime, ashes, and surgery have been set forth as remedies, to the confusion of those who have tried them bootlessly, it now appears that we are about to nail the rascals. The Boston Cultivator, contains an article “On Destroying Insects on Trees,” from which we quote:

“I did not intend to give it publicity until I had fully tested it, but as the ravages are very extensive in the West, I cannot delay giving you the experiment, hoping that some of your western readers may now give it a fair trial and report the result. I will give one case which may induce the experiment wherever the evil is felt. In conversation with a friend in Newburyport, Dr. Watson, last fall. I mentioned the experiment; he invited me to his garden, where last year a fruit-tree was infested with the nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors’ trees; he showed me a board nailed for convenience of a clothes-line upon one of the large limbs of the tree; he said he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any scientific mind.

“Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal over a few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight, size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia, which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of life, via Tomb. I think if the ladies should drive some small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of caterpillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the result will pay for the nails.”

Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start for the orchard; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail, and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with a nail, and the “ammonia evolved” will finish his functions!

The Southern Planter is out with a backer to the Boston Cultivator:

“A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke, of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neighbor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of the worm, with the exception of three, and these three were probably the most thrifty and flourishing peach-trees he ever saw. The only cause of their superiority known to his host, was an experiment made in consequence of observing that those parts of worm-eaten timber into which nails had been driven, were generally sound; when his trees were about a year old he had selected three of them and driven a tenpenny nail through the body, as near the ground as possible; whilst the balance of his orchard has gradually failed, and finally yielded entirely to the ravages of the worms, these three trees, selected at random, treated precisely in the same manner, with the exception of the nailing, had always been vigorous and healthy, furnishing him at that very period with the greatest profusion of the most luscious fruit. It is supposed that the salts of iron afforded by the nail are offensive to the worm, whilst they are harmless, or perhaps even beneficial to the tree.”

We do not wish to interrupt any experiments which the enterprising may choose to make. To be sure we regard the facts with some incredulity, and the chemical explanations with something of the mirthful superadded to unbelief. But if nails are an antidote to worms—a real vermifuge—let them be administered, whatever may be the explanations; whether they are an electric battery, giving the insects a little domestic, vegetable lightning, or whether they afford “salts of iron” to physic them, or “evolve ammonia” in such potent, pungent strength that vermicular nostrils are unable to endure it!

While one is fairly engaged in a campaign of experiments, we heartily hope that war will be carried to the very territory of ignorance, and we will propound several other important questions of fact and theory, which, if settled, will crown somebody’s brow with laurels.

It is said that hanging a scythe in a plum-tree, or an iron hoop, or horse shoes, will insure a crop of plums. This ought to be investigated.

It is said that pear-trees that are unfruitful, may be made to bear, by digging under them, cutting the tap root, and burying a black cat there. We do not know as it makes any difference as to the sex of the cat, though we should, if trying it, rather prefer the male cat.

Lastly, that we may contribute our mite to the advancement of science, we will state that, in our youth, we were informed, that, if we would go into the wood-house once a day and rub our hands with a chip, without thinking of red fox’s tail, the warts would all go off. We have no doubt that it would have been successful, but every time we tried the experiment, whisk came the red fox’s tail into our head and spoilt the whole affair. But might this not cure warts on trees?