Balloon Framing is not, however, a manner of effecting by machinery what has formerly been done by hand, but embraces a series of improvements in the art of building, which time and experience have shown to be thoroughly practical-that which has hitherto called out a whole neighborhood, and required a vast expenditure of labor, time, noise, lifting, hoisting, and the attendant danger, can, by the adoption of the balloon frame, be done with all the quietness and security of an ordinary day's work. A man and boy can now attain the same results with ease, that twenty men would on an old fashioned frame.

Suppose we compare the heavy, cumbersome barn frame of to-day with the barn of fifty years ago, with its rotton tenons, bulging sides, and brokenbacked roof. Can we see one single mark of improvement? Has fifty years advanced the art of building frames? What change is there for the better?

What is demanded, is something in keeping with the progressive spirit of the day. We want really better and stronger frames, and we want them to cost less. If our houses, barns and out-buildings can be built for less money, and be just as good, as convenient, and as safe, it is an improvement that will suit us.

The Balloon Frame answers these requirements. It has long since ceased to be an experiment; and where its principles are understood, no other style of frame is used.

Fig. 1.-Isometrical Perspective View of the Balloon Frame.

The engraving shows a portion of a Balloon Frame, drawn in isometrical perspective. This is sufficient to show the whole manner of construction, the other parts of the building being a repetition. The manner of securing the different timbers is shown in figs. 2 and 3-the nails being driven diagonally, and in a manner to secure the greatest amount of strength.

The sizes of the different pieces of timber in a frame of this size, are sills 3 by 8-corner studs, 4 by 4-other studding, 2 by 4-plate, 1 by 4-side strips, or side girts, 1 by 4-rafters, 3 by 6, or 2 by 5 will do-collars, 1 by 4, floor joists, 3 by 8, or may be 2 by 7. Rafters, studding and joists, are 16 inches between centers.

Small buildings of this character, not calculated for heavy storage, may have all timbers two feet between centres. Small buildings of one story, as tool-houses, granaries, cottages, &c., will be perfectly strong and secure, if all

the timbers above the first floor joists are ripped from common 1 inch floor plank-thus make studding, ceiling joists, and rafters, 14 inches by 5 inches.

For large barns, storehouses, &c., larger sizes will be required. The weight and power necessary to injure a building with 3 by 8 studding, with a double row of bridging, is more than is ever practically applied to any storehouse.

The lining of a balloon frame adds immensely to its strength, particularly so if put on diagonally; it may be done outside or inside, though on the whole the inside is preferable. If done outside, it should be carried over the sill and nailed to it; the sill being wider than the studding, in order to get a larger bearing on the masonry, and the floor joists being in the way, does not admit of inside lining being put on in the same manner. Close or continuous lining is not necessary for strength, but for dwelling houses adds much to the warmth. Large buildings, not used as dwelling houses, can be sufficiently well braced by diagonal strips of 1 inch board, 6 inches wide, nailed to the studding inside, 6 feet apart. Where vertical siding is used, these same strips can be put on in the same manner outside the studding. Let the strips run over the sill and nail to it. Between the strips on the sill, nail an inch board, and it is then ready for upright or battened siding. Small outbuildings, barns, &c., do not require any diagonal bracing.

Every stick of timber in a balloon frame not only has a weight to support, but its tensile and compressible strength, which theoretically is 11,800 pounds per square inch of its end area, is taken advantage of. This is not the case with the old style of frame. A balloon frame looks light, and its name was given in derision by those old fogy mechanics who had been brought up to rob a stick of timber of all its strength and durability, by cutting it full of mortices, tenons, and auger holes, and then supposing it to be stronger than a far lighter stick differently applied, and with all its capabilities unimpaired.

The balloon frame has been known in the newer sections of our country for many years; it has been tested and found to stand the test. It is not, nor cannot be patented; there is no money to be made out of it except as a public benefit, in which all share alike.

The following are some of the advantages claimed for it:

1. The whole labor of framing it is dispensed with.

2. It is a far cheaper frame to raise.

3. It is stronger and more durable than any other frame.

4. Any stick can be removed and another put in its place without disturbing the strength of those remaining-in fact the whole building can be renewed, stick by stick.

5. It is adapted to every style of building, and better adapted for all irregular forms.

6. It is forty per cent. cheaper than any other known style of frame. 7. It embraces strength, security, comfort and economy.

Architects, builders, mechanics, and practical men, are respectfully invited to prove the contrary.

THE PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE.

[From the London Quarterly Review.]

In the year 1856, a few Englishmen accepted the invitation of the French Government, crossed the Channel with their best live-stock and implements, entered into competition with the picked agricultural and mechanical skill of continental Europe, and found themselves by a long interval first in the arts and sciences required for producing meat and corn in the most economical manner, under a climate not eminently favorable, and on land which has long lost its virgin fertility. This is the problem which modern cultivators have to solve.

The live stock of the British islands are distinguished for three merits-the early period at which they become ripe for the butcher, the great amount of food they produce in return for the food they consume, and the large propor tion of prime meat which they yield.

The agricultural implements of England are distinguished for solidity of construction, as well as for the rapidity and completeness with which they execute their work-especially that class of work which in other countries is more imperfectly and expensively performed by the labor of men or cattle.

The best evidence of the superiority of British live stock and agricultural machinery will be found, not in the premiums and medals awarded to them in Vienna or Paris, but in the constantly increasing exportation of both to every part of the world where scientific cultivation has superseded the rude expedients of earlier times.

Farmers are prosperous, landlords are intent on improving their estates, laborers have ceased to hate the drill and the threshing machine; during the past harvest the reaping machine has come into working use; and competent judges are of opinion that an economical steam cultivator has been almost perfected. The time seems propitious for reviewing the series of events which during the last hundred years have combined to place English agriculture in the position which it now by universal consent enjoys. Different men and different means have, in important particulars, founded the agricultural prosperity of Scotland, although the two kingdoms have more than once exchanged improvements. A Scotchman only can do justice to the unwritten history of Scotch agriculture.

There is rarely a great invention received by the world of which the germ is not to be found in some preceding age. This is the case with the system of artificial manures, which has recently worked such wonders in agriculture, and which is touched upon as follows in "The new and admirable Arte of Setting Corne," by H. Platte, Esquire, published in 1601, by Peter Shorte, dwelling at ye signe of ye Starne on Bred Street Hill :"

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"Shavings of horne, upon mine own experience, I must of necessity commende, by means whereof I obtayned a more flourishing garden at Bishopdal, in a most barren and unfruitful plot of grounde, which none of my predecessors could ever grace or beautifie either with knots or flowers. I have had good experience, with singular good success, by strewing the waste sope ashes upon a border of summer barley. Malts duste may here also challenge his place, for foure or five quarters thereof are sufficient for an acre of ground. And sal armoniake, being a volatile salt first incorporated and rotted in common earth, is thought to bee a rich mould to plant or set in. Dogges and cattes and other beastes, and generally all carrion, buried under ye rootes of trees, in due time will make them flourish and bring forth in great abundance."

Thus we find that so long as two hundred and fifty-seven years ago an Englishman "had discovered the utility of ammonia in bones and flesh." Even in agricultural implements great inventions were suggested and forgotten, because the farmers of England were not prepared to receive them. The reaping machine carries us back to the agriculture of the Gauls. The horse hoe, the drill, and the water or wind driven threshing machines were employed in a few obscure localities, but it was not until necessity made farmers adventurous, and facilities of communication rendered one district conversant with the doings of another, that they grew into general use. Whatever, therefore, might have been effected on particular estates, the condition of English agriculture at the close of the eighteenth century nearly resembled that of the greater part of continental Europe at the present time. Wheat in many districts was rarely cultivated and rarely eaten by the laboring classes. Rye, oats, and barley were the prevailing crops: a naked fallow, that is to say, a year of barrenness, which was too often a year of exhausting weeds, was the ordinary expedient for restoring the fertility of soil. Farm-yard dung, exposed to the dissolving influence of rain, and carelessly applied, was almost the only manure. Artificial grasses, with beans, peas and cabbages, were rarely grown, and turnips were confined to a few counties, where they were sown broadcast. Cultivation (except plowing and harrowing) was performed almost entirely by manual labor; the rude implements were usually constructed on the farm, and often in a way to increase labor instead of to economize it. The cattle were chiefly valued for their dairy qualities or for their powers of draught, and were only fatted when they would milk or draw no longer. The greater number of breeds were large boned and ill shaped, greedy eaters, and slow in arriving at maturity; while as very little winter food, except hay, was raised, the meat laid on by grass in the summer was lost, or barely maintained, in winter. Fresh meat for six months of the year was a luxury only enjoyed by the wealthiest personages. Within the recollection of many now living, first class farmers in Herefordshire salted down an old cow in the autumn, which, with flitches of fat bacon, supplied their families with meat until the spring. Esquire Bedel Gunning, in his "Memorials of Cambridge," relates that, when Dr. Makepeace Thackeray settled in Chester about the beginning of the present century, he presented one of his tenants with a bull-calf of a superior breed. On his inquiring after it in the following spring, the farmer gratefully replied, "Sir, he was a noble animal; we killed him at Christmas, and have lived upon him ever since."

The reclaiming wild sheep walks, an improvement in the breeds of live stock, an increase in the quantity of food grown on arable land for their support and a better rotation of crops, are the events which distinguish the progress of English agriculture during the last century. The next step, after some advance had been made, was to break down the barriers which separated the farmers of that day, and which left them nearly as ignorant of what was going on in every district besides their own as of what was passing in China or Japan. The active agent in this work was the son of a prebendary of Canterbury-the well known Arthur Young, one of the most useful and sagacious, if not one of the most brilliant of men. Within the last twenty years, railways, the penny postage, and a cloud of newspapers have rendered personal and written communication universal. Let a superior animal be bred, an ingenious machine invented, or a new kind of manure be discovered, and in a few days the particulars are circulated through the press round the whole kingdom, and bring visitors or letters of inquiry from every quarter. But in the time of Arthur Young the most advanced counties communicated with the metropolis and each other by thoroughfares which could hardly be traversed except by a well mounted horseman or a broad wheeled waggon drawn by twelve horses, while as "not one farmer in five thousand read any thing at all," the printing press could not supply the place of personal inspection. Norfolk, with a subsoil which allowed the rain to filter through,

boasted her natural roads, and the inhabitants quoted with pride a saying of Charles II., that the county ought to be cut up to make highways for the rest of the kingdom. But this only proved how deplorable was the condition of the other parts of the country, for when Young visited Norfolk he did not meet with a single mile of good road. In Essex he found lanes so narrow that not a mouse could pass a carriage, ruts of an incredible depth, and chalk waggons stuck fast till a line of them were in the same predicament, and it required twenty or thirty horses to be tacked to each to draw them out one by one. The thoroughfares in fact were ditches of thick mud cut up by secondary ditches of irregular depth. In attempting to traverse them, Young had sometimes to alight from his chaise, and get the rustics to assist him in lifting it over the hedge. Such was the state of things when in 1767, he abandoned the farm in which he had experimented too much to be successful, and, availing himself of the frank hospitality which has in every age been the characteristic of our farmers and country gentlemen, made those celebrated tours," which are absolute photographs of agricultural England, and are models of what all such reports should be-graphic, faithful, picturesque, and philosophical!

About half a century after Young had published his principal English tours another celebrated man copied his example, and made his "Rural Rides" through various counties between the years 1821 and 1832. It would be natural to refer to this entertaining work of Cobbet to discover the changes which had taken place in the interval, but scarce a notion can be gleaned from it of the condition of agriculture. Superior to Young in talent, in force of language, and in liveliness of style, though not surpassing him in lucidity, which was impossible, he is, beyond comparison, inferior to him in information and candor. Devoting a large portion of his life to agriculture, and having won by his talents and his pungency the ear of the public, he did nothing whatever to advance the science. His powerful and reckless pen was chiefly employed in maintaining errors; and while Young, by the accurate record of impartial observations, has left his footmark deeply imprinted upon the soil, the turbulent cleverness of Cobbett was like a wind which makes a great stir at the moment, and then is hushed forever. The name of Arthur Young will always be mentioned with gratitude in every record of British farming; the name of Cobbett, if it is mentioned at all, will only be quoted as a warning. On recurring to his "Rural Rides," we have found them next to a blank upon the subject of which they profess to treat; and though abuse, egotism, conceit, dogmatism, and prejudice, when set off by vivacity, may make amusing reading, they contribute nothing to the promotion of agriculture.

Foremost among the men whose merits Arthur Young helped to make known to his contemporaries and hand down to posterity, was Robert Bakewell of Dishley; a man of genius in his way, for he laid down the principles of a new art. He founded the admirable breed of Leicester sheep, which still maintains a high reputation throughout Europe and the United States of America; and although he failed in establishing his breed of "Long horn cattle" and of "black cart horses," he taught others how to succeed. The yeoman farmer had not yet removed to a "parlor," and Bakewell sat in the huge chimney corner of a long kitchen hung round with the dried joints of his finest oxen, preserved as specimens of proportion, “a tall, stout, broadshouldered man of brown red complexion, clad in a brown loose coat and scarlet waistcoat, leather breeches, and top boots. There he entertained Russian princes, French and German Royal Dukes, British peers and farmers, and sight seers of every degree." Whoever were his guests, they were all obliged to conform to his rules." "Breakfast at eight o'clock, dinner at one, supper at nine, bed at eleven o'clock; at half past ten o'clock, let who would be there, he knocked out his last pipe. There he talked on his favorite subject, breeding," with earnest yet playful enthusiasm ;" there," utterly