Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/336

330 BROOM CORN HROSSET a horse and a machine that will plant two rows at the same time, may plant from 10 to 12 acres in a day. The labor of one hand four mouths will cultivate about six acres, and harvest the same, and the average produce per acre is about 500 Ibs. After the corn is well up, the culti- vator can be profitably used three or four times before hoeing, after which commences the weeding and thinning. As a general rule, two hoeings are sufficient. At the last time, and when the corn is 10 or 12 inches high, the Shakers use a double-moulded plough, which turns a furrow each way. Planting may be performed with safety from the middle of May to the 1st of June, and even later if the season is good. The usual practice in harvesting is to bend the stems or stalks of the corn some 2^ or 3 ft. from the ground, and leave them for a few days to dry. They are then cut 6 or 8 inches from the brush, and laid into heaps, ready to be carried to the scraper. The seed is removed from the brush by various methods, from the best horse-power scraping machines, by which the brush of three acres of corn may be cleaned in a day, down to the original hand machines of the simplest construction. That part of the stalk still remaining in the field should be ploughed under during the fall, or in the following spring. The practice of the Sha- kers is to break them down with a heavy drag in the spring following, and plough them under, and then run over the ground with a large roll- er, which process prepares the land again for planting. Some carry their stalks into the cat- tle or sheep yards, where they become incor- porated with the manure, and thereby make a valuable addition to the compost. When the broom corn was first introduced by the united society of Shakers in Watervliet, N. Y., in the year 1791, it was raised in the garden as other corn. In 1798 it began to excite attention, and some new brooms were manufactured by them for the market, and sold at the price of 50 cents each. The handles were made of soft maple timber, and turned in a common foot lathe. The machinery for manufacturing the brooms was very simple. .It consisted of noth- ing more than a roller or cylinder of wood, turned by a short crank for the purpose of winding on the cord or twine ; and by placing one or both feet against this cylinder, the tight- ness of the twine was governed, and the broom made by holding the handle in one hand, and applying the brush with the other, while wind- ing. The next process, by way of improve- ment, some few years after, was the addition of a bench to the roller, in a frame fastened to the bench, and a rag-wheel to hold the cord when wound upon the roller by a short crank as before. Nearly all the Shakers' societies in the United States are more or less engaged in this branch of employment ; but the societies at Watervliet, N. Y., and that at Union village, O., carry it on the most extensively. The cen- sus of the United States for 1870 gives no sta- tistics respecting broom corn. BR009IE, a S. county of New York, border- ing on Pennsylvania ; area, 680 sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 44,103. It is drained by the E. branch of the Susquehanna, the Chenango, Otselic, and other smaller streams, and trav- ersed by the New York and Erie, the Syra- cuse and Binghamton, the Albany and Susque- hanna, and the Delaware, Lackawana and West- ern railroads, and the Chenango canal. The surface is uneven. The valleys are fertile, but the uplands are only fit for grazing. The chief productions in 1870 were 84,926 bushels of wheat, 160,602 of Indian corn, 783,387 of oats, 450,028 of potatoes, 101,955 tons of hay, 2,961,378 Ibs. of butter, 72,137 of wool, and 164,809 of hops. There were 7,547 horses, 24,649 milch cows, 14,387 other cattle, 20,134 sheep, and 8,201 swine. Capital, Binghamton. BROOKE, William, an English author, born in Cheshire in 1680, died in Bath, Nov. 16, 1745. In conjunction with Fenton he aided Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He translated books 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23 ; Fenton, 1, 4, 19 ; the remaining 12 being by Pope. Broome also compiled the notes, and he received 500 for his whole work. He also published some ' indifferent poetry of his own. BROSSES, diaries de, or Debrosses, a French author, born at Dijon, Feb. 17, 1709, died in Paris, May 17, 1777. He was early proficient in science, jurisprudence, and literature, spent some time in Italy, was president of the parlia- ments of Dijon and Burgundy, and a member of the academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres ; but having excited the enmity of Voltaire by criticising his Dictionnaire philosophique, he was not admitted to the French academy. His principal works are : Lettres sur Vital actuel de la mile souterraine d 1 ffereulanum, the earliest publication on that subject (Dijon, 1750) ; His- toire de navigations aux terres australes, writ- ten at the request of Buffon, and introducing for the first time the designations Australasia and Polynesia (2 vols., 1756) ; Traite de la for- mation mecanique des langues (2 vols., 1765) ; and a collection of about 700 passages of Sallust, with elaborate comments, under the title of Histoire du septieme siecle de la republique romaine (3 vols., 1777). The last volume in- cluded a small portion of the original text, the publication of the rest, which was to form a quarto volume, being prevented by his death. Le president de Brasses, histoire des lettret et des parkments du 18"" siecle, was published in 1842. BROSSET, Slarie Feliciti, a French orientalist, born in Paris, Feb. -5, 1802. He was educated for the church, and for three years was a teacher in Jesuit colleges, but abandoned the- ology and devoted himself to the Semitic and other eastern languages, composing a grammar and dictionary of the Georgian lan- guage out of the Georgian version of the Bible, and eking out a scanty subsistence by type-setting and proof-reading. He accepted an assistant professorship of Armenian and