1023. To raise a Salad quickly.—Steep lettuce-seed, mustard, cresses, &c., in aqua vitæ. Mix a little pigeon's dung with some mould, and powdered slaked lime. In forty-eight hours the salad will be produced.
1024. Important Discovery relative to the Preservation of Grain.—To preserve rye and secure it from insects and rats, nothing more is necessary than not to winnow it after it is thrashed, but merely separate it from the straw, and to stow it in the granaries, mixed with the chaff. In this state it has been kept for more than three years without experiencing the smallest alteration, and even without the necessity of being turned to preserve it from humidity and fermentation. Rats and mice may be prevented from entering the barn, by putting some wild vine or hedge plants upon the heaps; the smell of the wood is so offensive to these animals, that they will not approach it. The experiment has not yet been made with wheat and other kinds of grain, but they may probably be preserved in the chaff with equal advantage. It must however be observed, that the husks and corns of rye are different from most other grain. It has been sown near houses where many poultry were kept, for the purpose of bringing up a crop of grass, because the poultry do not destroy it, as they would have done wheat, oats, or even barley in the same situation.
1025. To preserve Grain in Sacks.—Provide a reed cane, or other hollow stick, made so by gluing together two grooved sticks; let it be about three feet nine inches long; and that it may be easier thrust down to the bottom of the corn in the sack, its end to be made to taper to a point, by a wooden plug that is fixed in, and stops the orifice. About one hundred and fifty small holes, of one-eighth of an inch in diameter, are to be bored on all sides of the stick, from its bottom for about two feet ten inches of its length; but no nearer to the surface of the corn, lest too great a proportion of the air should escape there. By winding a packthread in a spiral form round the stick, the boring of the holes may be the better regulated, so as to have them about half an inch distant towards the bottom, but gradually at wider distances, so as to be an inch asunder at the upper part; by which means the lower part of the corn will have its due proportion of fresh air. To the top of the stick let there be fixed a leathern pipe ten inches long; which pipe is to be distended by two yards of spiral wire, coiled up within it. At the upper part of the pipe is fixed a taper wooden faucet, into which the nose of a common household bellows is to be put, in order to ventilate the corn.
If wheat, when first put into sacks, be thus aired, every other or third day, for ten or fifteen minutes, its damp sweats which would hurt it, will, in a few weeks, be carried off to such a degree, that it will afterwards keep sweet with very little airing, as has been found by experience.
By the same means other kinds of seeds, as well as wheat, may be kept sweet either in sacks or small bins.
1026. To preserve Oats from being musty.—Richard Fermor, Esq. of Tusmore, in Oxfordshire, has in his stable a contrivance to let oats down from a loft out of a vessel, like the hopper of a mill, whence they fall into a square pipe, let into a wall, about four inches diagonal, which comes into a cupboard set into a wall, but with its end so near the bottom, that there shall never be above a desirable quantity in the cupboard at a time, which being taken away, another parcel succeeds; by this motion the oats are kept constantly sweet (the taking away one gallon moving the whole above), which, when laid up otherwise in great quantities, frequently grow musty.