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2 THE SOUTHERN WORLD, AUGUST 16,1882. I thought, will assort that there is no percep tible difference in the climate o( its various sections ? Or that the tender fruit of Bre vard, Manatee and Sumter counties will do just as well in the counties of Escambia, Nassau and Jackson ? “Render unto Cocsar the things that are Ctesar’s" and give to each of the divisions that nature has so clearly defined, its just dues; don’t try to gather figs from thistles, nor to raise tropical fruits on the Georgia line. The general impression of Florida, as dis seminated by the superficial observation of tourists, is that of a vast level expanse of sand, whereon grows tall stately pine trees. Right as to the pine trees, wrong as to the universal dominion of flat plains and dreary sands—taking Florida as a whole, her sur face is gently undulating; no mountains, no peaks, no very high hills even, though the shores of many of her beautiful lakes are steejrand bold, and terraced by saw-palmet to, the cabbage palm, oaks, hickories, and hundreds of other indigenuous trees and shrubs, except where the enterprising set tler has taken possession, and ousted the na tive monarchs of the forest, in favor of the golden-fruited orange. The extreme southern portion of the pen insula, whose average breadth, by the way, is ninety miles, is occupied by the curious Everglades region, well known during the Seminole war as the stronghold of our In dian foes. “What is the Everglades region?” you ask. We doubt if many Northerners could answer that question. The general idea is that a vast amount of sticky, slushy mud- one immense marsh, with treesgrowing here and there, where a bit of solid land crops up. Now, the truth is, it is not a swampy place at all, but a great flat prairie, just like the prairies of our Western States, only in the Everglades the prairie is perpetually over flowed with clear pure water—a shallow lake—from three to thirty inches deep, ex tending over thousands of square miles, and dotted all over with islands, big and little, having a dense growth of cedar, gum, mag nolia, oak, cypreip, pine, bay, and in fact, a true tropical luxuriance of vegetation. Here dwell the remnants of the old pow erful Seminole tribes, and even here, in these dreary fastnesses, they are again threatened expulsion, inasmuch as a con tract lias been lately made, for the drainage of this vast region, which, when it is finally accomplished, will drive out the poor Indians from their place of refuge, and open up millions of acres of rich lands for cultivation. Four-fifths of Dade county and nearly, if not all of Monroe, are comprised in the Ev erglades, and for some distance to the north of these tracts, the country is a dead level, further north it becomes undulating, and gentle eminences, knolls and lakes of all sizes, from a quarter of an acre to ten and twenty miles in length and breadth, diver sify the quiet, peaceful beauty of the land scape. Going further north still, west of the neck of the peninsula, the country becomes ac tually rugged, the hills higher, the roads firm and good, and springs and rivulets abound, thus totally upsetting the precon cievcd northern notion of Florida levois, and universal sands. As the climate diflTers, so does the soil, though not with the same regularity ; that is, each natural division of the State pos sesses localities where limestone rocks, clay and sand, respectively predominate; neither East, West, Middle or 8outh Florida, is all limestone, all clay or all sand, neither is any one section composed , entirely of great "barrens” as they are termed, in other words fine forests, or entirely of the rich hammock lands, where flourish oaks, hick ory*. cypress, cedars, magnolias, wild orange trees, and—malarias—but each kind of land is found scattered broadcast through the State, the one sometimes merging almost perceptively into the other, and at others marked out by a sharp division line. Only a few miles from the writer at this pr^ent moment is a tract of hammock land bordering lake Griffin, which reaches back only half a mile then stops short, os by a chalked line, the piny woods commencing right then and there. The rich hammock mold lying not five feet from tho poorer piny woods soil, and tho tall pine trees reaching out to shake hands with their low lier, broad-girthed moss draped brethren of the oak family. The oak drops its acorns beneath the pine tree, the pine tree tosses its seed-bearing cones beneath the shade of the oak, yet neither acorn or pine seed sprouts nor grows, because they are "out of bounds,” yet only u few feet away, each sprouts and flourishes on its rightful side of the divis ion line. And then, half a mile away is another spot where the hammock creeps out so gradually into the piny woods, that it is hard to tell where one may be said to begin or the other to end. This debatable land is termed “scrub ham mock,” and is better than pine soil, as a rule, though poorer than hammock land; and there is still another kind of land called “black jack" because there flourishes the “black jack" oak, a small stunted tree, a sure indicator of poverty of soil. Moral, don't settle on “black jack land.” In the Everglades region there are exten sive pine barren tracts, but here timber is the exception, os compared with its lavish distribution over the rest of the State. The whole peninsula of Florida is of di luvial formation, the substratum of the eastern portion is clay, either pure or mixed with sand, but that of the western portion is rotten limestone, which is frequently un dermined by subterranean streams, form ing cavities large and small, which are termed “sinks,” these from the surface yiew, are conical hollows, often with running water or springs at the bottom, and varying from a few yards to several acres. Of these sinks more anon. Florida doesn't boast much of her rivers; she has not many to boast of, to tell the truth, the average height of her backbone is not over three hundred feet above the level of the sea, so we can’texpect her to shoulder many large streams, but she makes up in lakes, large and small. A few rivers she has, however, and of these she has no need to be ashamed. The St. John’s, well known to fame and the tourist, rise in Brevard county, and reaches the At lantic, after a quiet, peaceful journey. of three hundred miles. For a distance of one hundred miles from its mouth, it is so wide and sluggish as more to resemble a lagoon than a river, and this may also be said of Indian rivor, whicli is more like a long narrow lagoon or sound, than a veritable river; it runs parallel with the ocean, from which it is only separated by a narrow strip of land, and with which it is connected by the Indian River Inlet, in the same category is the Halifax river, following the coast line a little north of In dian river and communicating with the At lantic through (oh, too significant name) the mosquito Inlet Of the other principal rivers, the famous Ocklawaha, the Suwannee, Caloosahatchie and Withlacooche, are the only ones of special interest to the settler, for it is towards the regions watered by these streams, that the great tide of immigration is already set tling, a tide that is constantly increasing in volume and rapidity, until it seems des tined to attain the force and power of a great tidal-wave And so we believe it will,—a wave that shall sweep from end to end of our great peninsula, carrying away before it the old time listless ease that “hog and hom iny” require, and scattering far and wide, seeds—literally seeds—that shall flourish and bear fruit in the comfort, health and pros perity of her people. The Turnip-—Mwede. Hinds, Mississippi. Editor Southern World—This valuable vegetable, which created such a revolution in England within the memory of this octa- genarian, in the agriculture of that people, os to place them a decade in advance of others, and make them independent of the outside world by increased facilities of feed ing stock and improving land, has very few admirers in our Southern world. Tho straw of wheat, oats, rye, and barley, if kept from exposure and fed to cattle and sheep with turnips, will carry Btock through a winter, if in good condition at the opening of winter,* properly protected from tho weather. Mr! Mark W. Johnson keeps, no doubt, a proper collection of varieties of seed to please any farmer. Tho Strap-leaved will be needed for early turnips for the table, other varieties for fattening. I am constrained to allude to a variety of the Swede, name I forget, but think it is Seven-top Swede. The Yellow Swede, (Ruta Bags,) Is well known, but not so good in my opinion. May be more pro ductive. I doubt if our turnip raisers have tried tho White Swede for the table. It Is the best I have known and hogs eat them raw as readily as the sweet potato. Prepare at once, make your land rich and sow as soon as possible. The production is immense if the land is in high culture and rich. Order seed at once and try a littlo patch. I have tried and know it is the best of all turnips. H. or H. The Farmer a Mechanic. No. 2. A good grindstone well balanced and true, is one of the necessities of the farm as well os the work-shop, and it is bard to under stand how a farmer can get along without one, and to the writer it is almost as bad as no grindstone at all, to be compelled to use the wabbling, bobbing, rickety, creaking contraption, so often seen on the farm. A writer says: “Allow me to see a farmer’s grindstone and I will not ask to see him nor his fonts, nor his gates, nor his fences, and I will "grind out" for you his traits of charac ter with infallible certainty. If it is as hard as a nether mill stone and hung upon a wooden crank, and supported by a couple of old rails set against a fence, or on two stakes driven into the ground and bobs up and down and wabbles sides ways when revolving, likean old rickety, “drunk en” carriage wheel, and utters a mournful squeak which sounds like the last requiem of an old dilapidated ox-cart, he may be set down as a slack, unskillful, unsuccessful, thriftless, pcnny-wisc-and-pound-foolish sort of a nonentity, who does not take an agricul tural journal; and who always performs ei- ery job just as if lie thought his time was consumed to no good purpose, and his money thrown away." A grindstone may be too hard or it may be too soft; it may be too coarse-grained or too fine. For the general purposes of the farm it should be of medium hardness and rather coarse than fine, since many of the tools to be ground are heavy and with coarse edges. In selecting a grindstone care must be used to get one that is free from hard spots. These can only be certainly detected by using the stone. Therefore it is well to buy one on trial. To mount the grindstone, by all means get one of the patent iron axles that are to be found in every hardware store—one having collars and nuts toadjust and hold the stone. The “friction” wheels that are commonly sold with the shafts, are of little practical use, as the main friction when grinding is at the point of contact of the tool upon the surface of the stone, and this friction is un avoidably incident to the operation. If the bearings of the shaft are perfectly true and round, and run in well-oiled wood or lead boxes, the friction at those points will be at- most nothing. The axle should be long on the side of the hand crank, so that the hand that turns will not interfere with grindinga drawing knife, or other long tool; and the other end should have a short crank for attaching a foot-treadle. This latter is very convenient when no one is handy to “turn the grindstone.” The frame which supports the stone should be strong and rigid so as to preserve perfect steadiness. If preferred to run the stone in a trough of water, the trough should he so arranged that it may be lowered when not in use, so that the stone may not stand in the water, which would tend to soften the stone and soon cause it to lose its perfectly circular form by unequal wearing. (A better way to apply water is by means of a small vessel mounted above the stone and having a very small hole near Its bot tom through which the water may slowly trickle.) Neither should agrindstone bo ex posed to the rays of the sun, as this has the effect to harden the exposed portions. When mounted, tbo stone should turn perfectly true If it is not true it will constantly become less so, and the defect should be remedied at onoe. First, set it so timt it will run in the same perpendicular plune-by mean of thin wedges driven where they will effect the ob ject. If the shaft is put through tho exact centre of a stone that is }>erfectly circular undat a right angle to its side, the stone will run correctly. Any deviation, how ever, slight, from a perfect circular motion should bo corrected at once by applying an old file or thick glass bottle to the revolving stone, using a steady rest and touching only the portions that are too prominent. The grindstone being all right we now need appliances for holding tools properly while grinding them. Some mechanics uw nothing but the hand and rely on tho eye and the sense of feeling; but most work men need something to aid in bolding the tool at a uniform angle. All tools for cut ting wood that are finished with a basil edge should be so held too the grindstone that the basil will be concaved, so that when ap plied to the oil-stone the cutting edge and back angle, only will touch the surface. In the case of chisels this may be done by rest- Ing the end of the handle against one of a series of notches cut in a rest board which may be fixed to the frame of the grindstone, or the notches may be cut lh a convenient post or otb&r upright near the stone. For holding plane bits a clamp is thus made: Saw a cleft in the big end of a large wheel spoke sufficiently deep to hold the bit firmly and securely, and drive a small spike or lieadlesss nail into the other end. Wi th the bit fixed in the cleft and the other end of the clamp against the rest board, the grind ing may be done with the greatest ease and precision. A stock is almost indispensable to properly grinding a drawing-knife: Take a piece of stuff about 3X1 inches and eight feet long; fasten with screws a similar piec<>—equal in iengtii to the drawing-knife, across one end of the long piece, and pieces —equal in length to the handles of the drawing-knife—to the ends of the cross piece, forming together a clamp about like the figure: The description and the figure together will enable the reader to get the idea. The handles of the knife are to bo securely fast- tened or held under the projections of this cross-piece, and the other .end of the clamp is to rest on the ground or floor against a pin. A clamp for holding an axe or hatchet may be made similar to the plane-bit clamp, but somewhat stouter and with a cleft large enough to receive the pollot the axe. These clamps and others that may be de vised forother tools, are very convenient and when once used will not afterward be dis pensed with. They enable the grinder to grind a tool with mathematical exactness, with the least waste of metal, with very little muscular effort and in much less time. In the next number we will endeavor to sliow how different tools should be ground. ^ R. Farmer’s Habile. After all that is said about the healthful- ness of life in the country, it cannot be de nied that a very considerable proportion of our most active farmers are very far from robust in form and vigorous in digestion. We are not sure that the active working-men ?* lr / owns an *i cities are in any-wise in ferior in physical stamina and healthy bod ily powers to their brethren on the farms. The truth is, the habits of many farmers are not in accordance with the laws of health and physical development; not in that they do not work enough, or that they eat too much or sleep too little, but that work, and eating, and sleeping are not properly adjust ed to each other. It is a common notion that “early to bed and early to rise, will make you healthy, wealthy and wise; ” but the old proverb has been construed too literally by many. It was probably the idea of the author to condemn the practice of late suppers and night dissipations, and nine or ten o’clock breakfasts, but not to enjoin tlie habit of rising “ before day ” and work ing until dark. Tlie best authorities are ugreed that one should not go to work in the morning before taking food into the stomach, even if noth ing more than a few mouthfuls of solid food and a cup of hot coffee; and common reason ought to teach ns that there is no good sense in the habit of rising from bed an hour or two before day, breakfasting at day light and working until dark—intermitting labor an hour only or less, at noon. By such a course a man may and will accomplish more work in a given period of a few years, and he may possibly grow rich; but it will be ut the risk of health and premature old age—if not early death. The laws of health may bo violated with apparent impunity for a time—longer or shorter—but the penalty must at lust be paid when it is too late to retrieve the error. Not only should the fast be broken and the system fortified with food before the regular day’s labor is entered upon, but suf ficient time should be consumed for the proper mastication of the food. The prac tice of hurriedly bolting a meal, in five or ten minutes, cannot be too strongly con demned as the potent cause of more dyspep sia or indigestion than all other causes com bined. A perfect set of teeth cannot prop- erly prepare for digestion a hearty meal in less than thirty minutes time, and a longer period would be better than a shorter. The noon meal should not be commenced until the body has been refreshed by a little rest; and a period of at least half hour—better if one hour—of perfect rest should intervene