FONDNESS OF FARM STOCK FOR SALT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 47, 28 January 1843, Page 188

FONDNESS OF FARM STOCK FOR SALT.

In this country a small portion only of the agricultural community have tried the efficacy of salt upon farm stock. The avidity with which it is devoured by cattle and sheep, and even by horses, is astonishing, while the influence gained over them through their eagerness to obtain it is equally surprising. A nock of sheep or drove of cattle may instantly be brought together as if by magic, from every corner of an extensive pasture, provided they 'can hear the voice or see the person of him who comes prepared with a small quantity of salt ; for, on getting a hint that salt is about to be distributed, they come bounding along as fast as their legs can carry them. Though the common practice is to deposit the salt in small rude troughs, or upon planks of wood or flat stones, yet so anxious are these creatures to get at the salt, that scarcely. the shyest of them will refuse it from the hand of the person who supplies it. It is an interesting sight to witness two or three hundred sheep come at the farmer's call, bleating and frolicking, and somewhat in.conveniently hemming him in by their pressure on all sides. With regard to cattle, it is hardly safe to venture into an open pasture with salt in your possession, for so eager are they to obtain it, that they do not allow time for your depositing it upon the places intended for it, or even upon the ground if nothing else he at hand. Huge oxen, with large formidable horns, are rough companions when they press closely around you; and it sometimes happens that you experience much difficulty in getting your formidable friends satisfied. Horses are under a similar influence, although they seldom exhibit their partiality in so striking a manner. During some years I owned a fine and noble animal; but when I first purchased him he was somewhat shy and intractable. In the summer season he, along with two or three others, was turned out to grass, and notwithstanding the tameness and gentleness of his companions, it was with the greatest difficulty that he was haltered when thus running at large. Oats, Indian corn, and other tempting things, were offered to him in vain ; but, when once he had tasted salt, he forthwith became the slai r e of his passions ; its talismanic power was wonderful, for from that day any individual about the farm could easily take him captive, provided half an ounce of salt was offered him as a bribe. Indeed it was not necessary to coax him to suffer himself to be taken ; on the contrary, he would come voluntarily to his enslaver, and endeavour to coax him out of his salt. — Mark Lane Express. .

Disappointment in Love. — People try to re" concile you to a disappointment in love, by asking why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the passion; but, that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being in our veins : so passion leaves its poison in the mind. It is the nature of all passion and of all habitual affection. We throw ourselves upon it at a venture, but we cannot return by choice. If it is a wife that has proved unworthy, men compassionate the loss, because there is a tie, they say, which we cannot get rid of. But has the heart no ties ? Or if it is a child, they understand it. But is not true love a child? Or when another has become a part of ourselves, " where we must live, or have no life at all," can we tear them from us in an instant ? — No : these bargains are for life ; and that for which our souls have sighed for* years cannot be forgotten with a breath, and without a pang. — Hazlitt. Here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect, and will not touch a book, or enter into a debate with a person that will question any of those things which to him are sacred. Another surveys our differences in religion with an equitable and fair indifference, and so finds probably that none of them are in everything unexceptionable. These divisions and systems were made by men, and carry the mark of fallible on them ; and in those whom he differs from, and, till he opened his eyes, had a general prejudice against, he meets with more to be said for a great many things than before he was aware of, or could have imagined. Which of these two now is most likely to judge right in our religious controversies, and to be most stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim at? * * * Every one must allow that he shall know the country better that makes often sallies into it, and traverses it up and down, than he that like a millhorse goes still round in the same track, or keeps within the narrow bounds of a field or two that delight him. — Locke. It is worthy of observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death t and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can. win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honour aspireth to it ; grief flieth it; fear preoccupateth it; say, we read, after Otho the Emperor had shun himself, pity, which is the the tenderest tie of affections, provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their Sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. — Bacon.

Nkw Theory jOf the .Dead Sba. — In" a work on Judca and the neighbouring countries, just 1 published, by the Rev. J. A. Wylie, we observe a new theory proposed of the Dead Sea. Our readers are aware that, since the days of Buckhardt, it has been supposed that there was no lake in the valley of the Jordan previous to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that the river Jordan flowed through El Araba, the great valley of Edom, to the eastern branch of the Red Sea. Mr. Wylie has shown, on unquestionable authority, that this theory can no longer be regarded as tenable. The level of the Dead Sea being considerably below both that of El Araba and the Red Sea, it is impossible, in the common j nature of things, that the Jordan could ever have flowed through it, and the lake consequently must have existed in the plain ever since the creation. The Dead Sea, as Mr. Wylie shows, consists of two lakes, an upper and a lower, the former being forty miles long and the latter ten ; aud the division betwixt them being strongly marked by a contraction in the mountains which run along the shore on both sides and a rising in the bottom, which offers a ford crossed by the Arabs at all seasons. Mr. Wylie supposes that, previous to the destruction of Sodom, the lake terminated at what is now the ford, thus leaving between its southern extremity and the head of the valley of Araba a fertile plain of about twenty miles in lenigth and six in breadth — the scriptural valley of Siddim, where the cities stood, andwhere Lot fed his flocks. Sodom and her neighbour cities stood, he supposes, at the head of the plain, near what was then the southern termination of the lake.