Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/681

 INTEUIOR FINISHING OF FARM HOUSES. 07 l'25[) 1260 iron sink, or one of wood covered with lead. The sloping plate, a, which ought to be grooved, is found particularly useful for draining the water from vegetables, fish, &c., and should never be omitted in any kitchen sink. 1379. Jmong the Fumilitre of the Store-room of a farm house, there ought to be proper weighing and measuring machines, for proving the weight or measure of articles purchased. One of the most ingenious and generally appli- cable weighing-machines is the farm and family steelyard, invented by Mr. Ruthven of Edin- burgh. It may be made to any size, so as to weifh either a pound or a ton; and only one weight is necessary, its power being increased or diminished by the weight used being moved along a lever. (See IJhc^/c of Jgr., 2d edit. § 2570, fig. 280.) Fig. 1260 is a weighing- machine, for eitlier grocery goods, bread, butcher's meat, or any similar articles, which, thouo-h it is not so extensively useful as the other, yet is more simple ; and, occasioning very httle trouble, and not being liable to go out of repair, is well adapted for general use. The dial weigh- ing-machine, also, occasions very little trouble ; but, as its accuracy depends on the elasticity of the iron spring continuing always the same, it cannot, we think, be so durable an instrument as either of the two above mentioned. 1.380. The Fittings iip and Furnishing of the Dairy have been noticed § 729. The dairy furniture consists of the churn, of which there is a great variety of kinds ; but the cheapest and best, on a very small scale, is the box-churn {Encyc of Agr., 2d edit, fig. 1214), already recommended for cottages. For a dairy on a large scale, there are several excellent sorts figured in the same work, which may either be impelled by manual labour or by machinery. There is a model of one, worked by a windmill, in the museum of the Highland Society of Scotland ; and there is also a model, in the same museum, of a double churn, to be worked by manual power applied to a pendulum, the invention of Mr. Vallance of Libberton, Lanarkshire, an engineer ever fertile in ex- pedients, and the author of many valuable inventions. Of cheese- presses there are many excellent ones ; there is one of cast-iron manufactured at the Shotts ironworks, in which the pressure is produced by a combination of a wheel and pinion with a lever and weight, and the cost of which is only 65s. This press, fig, 1261, is used in the dairy of Mr. Ogilvie of Mere (see Design XXXVII. § 1153), who infonns us that his dairy- maid had a strong prejudice against it at first, but that before she had used it for three months, she greatly preferred it to the old-fashioned box-press or stone press ; as she could with this new press regulate the pressure to the greatest nicety, and with tlie greatest ease, by means of the weight on the lever, which is capable of communicating a pressure of from one ton and a half to two tons and a half. A swing frame for turn- ing cheeses has lately been invented by Mr. Blurtan, and is described in vol. xlviii. of the Transactions of the Society of Arts, p. 19- It maybe described as a double shelf ■which turns on pivots, by which means the cheeses are not only turned but placed on new surfaces. There are various descriptions of milk-pans, of wood, earthenware, and metal ; but the cheapest and best, we believe, are those of cast iron, invented by Mr John Baird, manager of the Shott's ironworks. These pans or dishes cost from s. 6d. to 8s. 6d. each, according to their sizes, which are from one quart to ten gallons. Their shapes are either circular or oval ; the largest circle being twenty-one inches and a quarter in diameten. This gives the maximum of width for dairy shelves ; but square pans, by covering every part of the surface of the shelf, are the most economical. Milk-pans have been formed of zinc, and these are said to throw up cream better than pans fomied of 4 K