The American Agriculturist. Vol. II. No. XI, December 1843: Designed to Improve the Planter, the Farmer, the Stock-breeder, and the HorticulturistVarious
Science
The American Agriculturist. Vol. II. No. XI, December 1843: Designed to Improve the Planter, the Farmer, the Stock-breeder, and the Horticulturist
Various
Agriculture -- Periodicals; Agriculture -- United States -- Periodicals
A REMARKABLE HORSE.--In passing through Mr. Maxwell's barn-yard, I
noticed a couple of horses, one of which was hoppled with a strong iron
chain. What mischievous young horse have you there? He replied, it is
my old family mare Kate, who has carried me, and my wife and children,
safely for the last one and twenty years! I bought her when she was
about four years old, but she will break fences now (wooden ones) with
her irons on, she is so active and cunning.
LOCUST EGGS.--I remarked at Nyack the work of the locust, and Mr. M.
and Thomas Addis Emmet, Esq., examined with a good microscope, a twig
worked by the little insect. The twig being split in the line of the
work, exhibited the whole process of the egg deposite. The twig is
pierced nearly to its centre at every three quarters of an inch, or
nearly so; the wood is rendered fibrous, it is then lifted up, and
the eggs, which are of a long, oval form, are deposited side by side
at an angle of about 45 degrees to the grain of the twig, and the
fibrous tuft of wood placed over them, with its end sticking out; these
incisions being repeated every inch on a line for some few inches in
each twig. With the microscope, we saw the eyes of the young locusts
always heads to the centre. The general outline of the young animal was
perceptible through its delicate membranous cover. They moved slightly
on being disturbed. Almost every twig so operated on by the locust was
entirely dead. The magnifying power of the microscope was perhaps 40 or
50.
VALUE OF AN ORCHARD.--I visited an apple orchard at Nyack, which
arrested my attention by its regular and healthy appearance. I found
young Van Houton at home, who, with perfect good feeling and true
politeness, gave me the account of the orchard which I desired. When
his father was about fifty years of age, he undertook to plant 150
winter pippin-trees on that spot. His neighbors thought him an old fool
to plant twigs of apple at his time of day. Young Van Houton, then
about 16 years of age, held the little nurslings in the holes while
his father filled in the soil. The old gentleman continued to prune
them, so that they are widely branched and open for air and sun within
the mass of branches. For twenty or twenty-two years past, the old
gentleman has often received $1,000 a year for his apples. Sometimes $6
per barrel; sometimes sold in the orchard for $1 per barrel. That old
gentleman and his wife are now, between them, 174 years old. Let no man
be afraid to plant winter pippins because he is fifty or sixty years of
age.
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