The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 12, March 22,
1884, by Various

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Title: Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 12, March 22, 1884
       A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside

Author: Various

Release Date: February 22, 2012 [EBook #38955]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE PRAIRIE FARMER

A Weekly Journal for

THE FARM, ORCHARD AND FIRESIDE.

ESTABLISHED IN 1841.
ENTIRE SERIES VOL 56--No 12.

CHICAGO, SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1884.

PRICE $2.00 PER YEAR
IN ADVANCE.


[Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was originally located on page
184 of the periodical. It has been moved here for ease of use.]

THE CONTENTS OF THIS NUMBER.

AGRICULTURE--Drainage and Good Husbandry Page 177; Plan for a Flood Gate,
178; Great Corn Crops, 178; A Charming Letter, 178; Prairie Roads, 178;
Experiments with Indian Corn, 178; Specialty Farming, 178.

HORTICULTURE--Sand Mulching of Orchard Trees, Page 182; Pear Blight, 182;
The Black Walnut, 182. Notes on Current Topics, 182; Prunings, 182-183.

FLORICULTURE--Some New Plants, Page 183.

OUR BOOK TABLE--Page 183.

ENTOMOLOGICAL--Insects in Illinois, Page 179.

SILK CULTURE--Osage for Silk-Worms, Page 187.

SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL--Items, Page 187.

LITERATURE--The Gentleman Farmer (Poetry), Page 190; Frank Dobb's Wives,
190-191.

FIELD AND FURROW--Items, 179.

HUMOROUS--Items, Page 191.

POULTRY NOTES--Chicken Chat, Page 186.

THE APIARY--Spring Care of Bees, Page 186; Extracted Honey, 186; Southern
Wisconsin Bee-Keepers' Association, 186.

EDITORIAL--Items, Page 184; Lumber and Shingles, 184; Foot-and-Mouth
Disease, 184; Premiums on Corn, 184-185; The First Unfortunate Result,
185; Questions Answered, 185; Wayside Notes, 185.

YOUNG FOLKS--Little Dilly Dolly (Poetry) Page 189; Uncle Jim's Yarn, 189;
Puddin Tame's Fun, 189; The Alphabet, 189; What a Child Can Do, 189.

LIVE STOCK--Items, Page 180; Polled Aberdeen Cattle, 180; Grass for Hogs,
180; A Stock Farm and Ranch, 180; Western Wool-Growers, 180; The Cattle
Diseases near Effingham, 180-181.

THE DAIRY--Camembert Cheese, Page 181; Few Words and More Butter, 181.

COMPILED CORRESPONDENCE--Page 181.

VETERINARY--Symptoms of Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Page 181; Shyness and
Timidity, 181; Glanders, 181.

HOUSEHOLD--How He Ventilated the Cellar, Page 188; An Old Roman Wedding,
188; Mr. Smith's Stovepipe, 188; Progress, 188; A Family Jar, 188; Mouce
Trap and other Sweetemetes, 188; A Sonnet on a Ronnet, 188; Pleasantries,
188.

NEWS OF THE WEEK--Page 192.

MARKETS--Page 192.


[Illustration: ABERDEEN-ANGUS BULLOCK, "BLACK PRINCE." Owned by Geary
Bros., London, Ont.]




Drainage and Good Husbandry.

BY C. G. ELLIOTT, DRAINAGE ENGINEER.


I.

The practical advantage of drainage as it appears to the casual observer,
is in the increased production of valuable crops. Ordinary land is
improved, and worthless land so far reclaimed as to yield a profit to its
owner, where once it was a source of loss and a blemish upon an otherwise
fair district. The land-buyer who looks for a future rise in his purchase,
recognizes the value of drainage, being careful to invest his capital in
land which has natural drainage, or is capable of being drained
artificially with no great expense, if it is suitable for use as an
agricultural domain. The physician, though perhaps unwilling, is obliged
to admit drainage as an important agency in the reduction of malignant
diseases and much general ill-health among dwellers in both country and
village. Our State Board of Health recognizes the influence of land
drainage upon the healthfulness of districts where it is practiced. The
Secretary of this Board gives it as his opinion that even good road
drainage would diminish the number of preventable diseases 25 per cent.

Such are now some of the impressions as to the value of drainage among
those who judge from acknowledged effects. That a great change has been
brought about by this practice is apparent to the most superficial
observer, if he compares pre-drainage with the present.


A FEW FACTS.

The Indiana Bureau of Statistics made an investigation about two years ago
of the influence of tile drainage upon production and health in that
State. Two periods of five years were selected, one before drainage was
begun, and the other after most of the farms had been drained, the area
examined being one township in Johnson county.

As near as could be determined, the average yearly yield of wheat for a
period of five consecutive years before drainage was nine and a half
bushels per acre. The same land and tillage after drainage in a period of
five consecutive years produced an average of nineteen and one-fourth
bushels per acre. Comparing the corn crops in the same way for the same
time, it was found that the average yearly yield before drainage was
thirty-one and three-fourths bushels per acre, and after drainage
seventy-four and one-fourth bushels per acre.

In order to determine the influence of drainage upon health, physicians,
who had, during the same two periods of five years each, answered all
calls in cases of disease, were asked to report from their books all cases
of malarial fever. It was found from this data that, for the first period
of five years before drainage, there had been 1,480 cases of malarial
disease. During the next five years under a pretty good system of
drainage, there were but 490 cases of such disease. These facts show that
drainage not only brings material prosperity to the individual, but
promotes the general healthfulness of the climate of that district, in
which all are interested and all enjoy.

It is a matter of note that the Campagne about Rome, which in ancient days
was the healthful home of a dense population, is now afflicted with the
most deadly fevers. It is claimed by high authorities that this is due to
the destruction and choking of the drains which in excavating are found
everywhere, but always filled and useless.

It will be readily seen that this subject has at least two important
bearings upon our prosperity, and though in considering and perfecting
general farm drainage, the effect upon health may be manifested without
effort being put forth in that direction, yet it should always be kept in
mind and receive that consideration which it deserves.


DRAINAGE AND FANCY FARMING.

It is thought by many who have not yet tested the value of tile drainage,
that it is one of those luxuries often indulged in by so-called fancy
farmers. By such farmers is meant those who farm for pleasure rather than
for profit; those who raise wheat which costs them $1 per bushel, but
which is worth only eighty cents on the market; those who raise beef at a
cost of ten cents per lb. and sell it for six cents per lb.; in
short, they are men (and there are many of them) who receive their income
from some other source, and cultivate a farm for recreation. That drainage
properly belongs to this class of farmers is a mistaken notion, as
hundreds of thrifty, money-making farmers in the West would prove, could
they now give their experience. In the example previously given, drainage
increased the production of wheat and corn fully 100 per cent, which was a
township report for five years. In order to emphasize these statements, we
will insert a few practical examples communicated to the Drainage Journal
during last year.

Geo. P. Robertson: "One ten-acre field failed to produce anything except a
few small ears. I drained it, and have cropped it for eight years
successively, and have paid time and again for husking 100 bushels of corn
per acre."

"Mr. Losee, Norwich, Canada, says that as a matter of actual test, his
underdrained land yields one-third larger crops than his undrained fields,
although the same treatment in other respects is applied, and the land is
of the same character throughout. The average wheat yield of his undrained
land is twenty bushels per acre, while the drained fields yielded an
average of thirty bushels. As the cost of draining on his farm is
estimated at $20 per acre, this preparation of the soil pays for itself in
two years."

Horton Ferguson, Indiana: "The swamp contained twenty-seven acres, and was
regarded by all neighbors as utterly worthless except for hunting grounds.
Mr. Ferguson, who has great faith in underdraining, determined to
undertake to reclaim the land, confident if successfully done, it would be
a paying investment. Last year he tile drained and grubbed it, paying
customary rates for all the labor and tile, and this year put it in corn,
with the following result:

                                         Dr.      Cr.
     Tile used for 27 acres            $544 87
     Paid for ditching                   88 00
     Expense for clearing and grubbing  275 00
                                       -------
     Total expense                     $907 87
                                               --------
     By 2,530 bushels of corn at 50 cents      $1,265 00

The land proved to be remarkably rich, having produced, as shown, ninety
bushels to the acre, and Mr. F. assures us that several acres exceeded 100
bushels to the acre. It will thus be observed that he realized the first
year of cultivation enough to pay the entire expense of reclaiming and had
$357.13 left to pay on the crop expense. Next season, if favorable, he
expects a still better yield."

Every farmer knows that, in these times of easy transportation, profits do
not depend so much upon the price his product brings in the market as upon
the quantity he has to dispose of. In other words, abundant crops are the
farmer's source of income. There is evidence enough at hand to justify the
statement that of all improvements put upon farms containing wet land
valued at $40 per acre and upwards, drainage pays the largest profit for
the outlay. Just what this profit will be will depend upon the soil
drained, the necessary cost required to improve it, and the use and
management of it after it is drained. All of these things vary so that
each case must be considered by itself. Drainage is simply a necessary
part of good husbandry which merits the careful consideration of all
thinking farmers.




Plan for a Flood Gate.


To maintain a fence across a water course, is one of the trials and
tribulations of the farmer. After a heavy rain, generally fences in such
places are either badly damaged or entirely washed away. Having been
troubled this way for years, I have hit upon the following plan, which,
after two years' trial I find to be a success.

A stick of timber, three or four inches in diameter, is placed where the
gate is needed, and fastened down with stakes, driven slanting, on each
side, the tops of the stakes lapping over the piece so as to hold it
securely, and driven well down, so as not to catch the drift, but allowing
the piece to turn freely; inch and half holes are bored in the piece and
uprights are fitted in them; the material of which the gate is made is
fastened to these uprights. A light post is driven on the lower side and
the gate fastened to it.

This will keep the gate in place in any ordinary flood, but when a Noah
comes along, it turns down on the bottom of creek, and waters and drifts
pass over it. When the water subsides all that is necessary to do is to
turn the gate back to its upright position. If the gate is not needed
during the winter, it is better to lay it down and let it remain in that
position until spring, for if it is fastened with the post in an upright
position, it will be broken with the spring floods.     A. E. B.
CARTHAGE, ILL.




Great Corn Crops.


It having been mentioned in the Iowa State Register some weeks ago that
Mr. Hezekiah Fagan, of Polk county, in that State, had once grown one
hundred and fifty-eight bushels of corn per acre, a son of Mr. Fagan
writes the following regarding the kinds of corn, the ground, and the
manner of cultivation:

"Father's farm joined Brown's Park on the north and run a mile north; the
corn was raised where the old orchard now is; it was part prairie and part
brush land, and was about the third crop. The ground was plowed in the
spring, harrowed and marked out with a single shovel both ways, the rows
being four feet apart each way. The corn was dropped by hand and covered
with a hoe, and left without harrowing until large enough to plow, and was
plowed twice with single shovel, and once with the two horse stirring plow
and hilled up as high as possible, and hoed enough to keep clean. The seed
was from corn father brought from Rockville, Ind., with him when he moved
to Des Moines, in the spring of 1848, and was of the large, yellow variety
which matured then and matures now with anything like a good season, and I
verily believe that with as good ground and as good treatment and as much
care in having every hill standing, and from three to four stalks in every
hill, that the amount might be raised again, if it was over 150 bushels
per acre, and I must say that I have never seen a large variety of corn
that suited me so well, that would yield so much, or mature so well, and
if any Iowa farmer will come and look at my crib of corn of this year's
raising, and if he will say he can show a better average ear raised on
similar ground, with similar treatment, I would like to speak for a few
bushels for seed at almost any price, and I will not except the
much-puffed Leaming variety."

The young man adds that his advice to Iowa farmers is, "to raise big
horses, big cattle, big hogs, big corn, and big grass, and if the profits
are not big, too, they had better make up their minds farming isn't their
forte, and go at something else."

Being desirous of knowing something of his big corn yield we wrote to Mr.
Clarkson, of the Register, for further information, and received the
following reply:

    DEAR SIR: Yours of the 7th inst., relative to the Fagan corn
    received. The corn raised by Hezekiah Fagan was thirty years
    ago, and he received the premium for it at the Iowa State
    Fair in 1854. The only facts I have relative to it are in
    the published proceedings of the State Agricultural Society.
    It states that he raised in Polk county, Iowa, on five
    acres, at the rate of 139-1/2 bushels per acre, shelled
    corn. The whole, shelled, measured 697-1/2 bushels, but
    weighed, it made 151 bushels and fifty-three pounds per
    acre.

    At the same fair, J. W. Inskip exhibited, with all of the
    necessary proofs, 136 bushels per acre.

    I think there was no mistake in these matters, as great care
    was taken to have statement correct; it is to this crop
    which his son refers in a late number of the Register. Yours
    truly,     C. F. CLARKSON.
    DES MOINES, IOWA.




A Charming Letter.


At the head of the agricultural department in THE PRAIRIE FARMER I notice
a standing invitation, viz.: "Farmers, write for your paper." All right!
Now, if you will just move up a little I'll take a seat in your
Communicative Association.

We, that is my wife and myself, eagerly read and discuss the interesting
articles with which THE PRAIRIE FARMER is replete every week, and many are
the practical hints that we have found therein.

It is not strange that, in the heart of a new country with vast
undeveloped resources and unlimited possibilities, a young farmer who has
his fortune yet to make, should be particularly enthusiastic. Tired of the
atmosphere of the school-room, fagged out by ten years of study and
teaching, and plainly seeing the improbability of being able to lay by
enough for a rainy day or old age in this noble, but as a rule,
unremunerative calling, my mind involuntarily reverted back to my early
life on the old homestead in Illinois, to substantials implied in that
word, and to its pleasant memories.

My mind was made up. With my portion of the old homestead in my pocket, I
turned the key in the school-house door, grateful for the experience and
lessons of patience gained inside of it, a friend of education, and with a
heart full of sympathy for the teachers of our public schools. I came to
"the land of the Dakotas" once more to break the "stubborn glebe" and
enjoy the sweets of farm life. Next June I shall have had three years'
experience in my new undertaking. I have succeeded fairly well. At some
future time I may communicate something about raising wheat and vegetables
in Dakota, to the readers of "our paper."

This winter is proving to be rather long and stormy, but with plenty of
fuel, good books and papers, time has not hung heavily on my hands.
Indeed, I consider these long Northern winters a decided advantage to
those who regard the cultivation of the mind as important as the
cultivation of the fields. I am afraid the majority of farmers do not lay
enough stress upon mental culture. In this age of cheap books there can be
no excuse for being without them. Systematic reading leads to the best
results in mental culture just as systematic farming leads to the best
results in agriculture. At the beginning of the winter I select some
standard work as my principal reading matter and stick to it until I have
it completed, reading for an interlude, good weekly newspapers, and one or
two of the standard magazines, with which I always like to be supplied.
This breaks up all monotony, and makes reading thoroughly enjoyable and
instructive. This winter I am reading the works of Goethe, the great
German author.

March, the last winter month, has come, and although the wind is still
howling and snow flying, before the first of April we expect to see the
railroads thronged with emigrant cars bringing new settlers, more thrift
and more capital. Thousands of new homes will be established on the
fertile prairies next summer.

Will you please regard this as a kind of an introduction into your
"association?"

If we find that we are mutually agreeable perhaps we shall find occasion
to meet again.

KASPER VON ESCHENBACH, PRAIRIE PARK FARM, BATH, D. T.


Prairie Roads.

The article on prairie roads in THE PRAIRIE FARMER of March 1st, 1884, by
A. G. H., of Champaign county, was good, and I would like to see more on
the same subject. If we get any better roads, we must keep the ball
rolling.

The great objection to the Ross plan, or any plan of road-tiling here, is
this. When tile is laid in the roadway the teams will travel right over
it, and the black soil gets packed and puddled until it is as impervious
to water as clay, and the water can't get into the tile. And on the clay
hillsides, if the tile is covered with clay, the water can't get into it.
This has been well tested here, for we have been road-tiling for six
years.

The question seems to be to get the water into the tile. The answer is
simple enough. We must provide sink holes for it. We must fill the ditch
over the tile with sand, gravel, or anything that will let the water in, a
yard in length, say, once every rod. Then I think the Ross plan would be
perfect.

As to the cost, well, $750 per mile seems large, but to take an average of
the roads in our county one-half that sum would answer, for it is only the
worst places would need the full Ross plan.

In a good many places, one string of tile with gravel sinks would do, and
others with the laterals to drain all to one side, thus saving the cost of
one string of tile, or more than one-third of the whole cost.

Now, if we get the commissioners to commence the work, we must vote for
men who are in favor of road-tiling as commissioners. There is where the
battle must be fought. Buckle on the armor comrades and see that the work
is done.

W. H. S., MCLEAN CO., ILL.


Experiments With Indian Corn.

On May 16, 135 kinds of corn were planted in the garden, with the
intention of promoting the cross fertilization of the varieties in order
to study the effects. The seed used was some of it selected on account of
its purity; other seed was from named varieties, still other seed from
varieties purposely hybridized, or presumed from their appearance or
location on the ear to be hybridized; and seed which possessed
peculiarities in appearance. The types represented were the three kinds of
pop-corns, the flint pop, the pearl pop, and the rice pop; the flints in
eight-rowed and twelve-rowed varieties, and soft or Tuscarora's; the
sweets in two or more types of ear, the one corresponding to the flint,
another to the dent corn ear; and the dents also in two or more types, the
eight-rowed with broad kernel, and another, the many rowed, with deep
kernel. We also had a pod or husk corn.

Through a study of the crop from these various seeds, we are enabled to
make some general conclusions, which probably are sufficient to generalize
from, but which certainly apply to the case in hand.

The seed of the preceding year gives uniformity of ear; that is, a dent
corn seed may produce an eight-rowed flint, or an eighteen-rowed dent, but
each ear will be perfect of its kind, and will be free from kernels of
other type than its own. The flint corn kernel may produce several
varieties of flint corn ear, or dent corn ear, but there will be no
variety in the kernel upon the ear; a dent corn seed may furnish a sweet
corn ear, and dent corn ears, but not mixed upon the cob. A pop-corn
kernel may produce a sweet corn ear, of sweet corn type, a sweet corn ear
of pop-corn type, or a pop-corn ear of the various types, without
admixture of kernels upon the ears.

On the other hand, hybridization of the current year produces changes in
the kernel, so that one ear of corn may bear kernels of various colors,
and of various types, the tendency, however, being for the shape of the
kernel to be governed by the type of the maize ear upon which it is found.

The appearance of various types upon an ear allow of some curious
generalizations. Thus, the rice pop kernel form does not appear upon ears
of other character, nor does the pearl pop kernel form appear upon the
rice pop ear. The flint pop does not seem to appear upon either the rice
or the pearl pop type, so far as form is concerned, but its structure,
however, influences. Sweet corn, however, appears upon the three types of
pop-corn indiscriminately, but, on the other hand, the pop-corns do not
appear upon the flint corn ears. While flint corn appears abundantly on
sweet corn ears, on the other hand, sweet corn does not appear upon the
flint corns. Dent corn kernels will appear upon the sweet corn whose type
of ear is that of the dent ear, but not upon sweet corn whose type is that
of the flint ear. The dent corn, again, does not appear upon the flint
ear, but in some isolated instances the flint corn kernel may appear upon
the dent ear.

The appearance of kernels of one variety upon ears of another variety, for
each of the types, is of frequent and constant occurrence, except in the
case of red ears. The red ears have a constancy of color which is truly
remarkable: where sweet corn appears upon red pop and red dent ears the
sweet corn partakes of the red color.

The practical value of these deductions consists in the guide they afford
toward the improvement of the varieties of corn that we grow. For
instance: by planting in adjoining hills, or, better still, the mixed seed
of two varieties of corn, one of which is distinguished for its length of
ear and smallness of cob, and the other for the large size of its kernel,
we should anticipate, in many instances, the transfer of the large kernel
to the small ear and of the small kernel to the large ear. By selecting
from the crop those ears which have length and the large kernel, we should
anticipate, by a series of selections, the attaining of a new variety, in
which the large kernel and length of cob would be persistent. The same
remarks hold true with the dent corns. But in the matter of selections the
true principle would seem to be to plant but one kernel of the desired
type from an ear of the desired type, and to keep the plant from this
kernel free from the influence of plants of another type, and securing the
crop through self-fertilization. After the first year of this procedure,
by the selection of two or more kernels of the same type from different
plants, cross fertilization should be used, the crop being gradually
purified by selection.

While the maize plant, as a rule, is not self-fertilized, that is, as a
general thing the pollen from one plant fertilizes the silk of another,
yet in very many cases the pollen and the silk upon the same plant is
synchronous, and self-fertilization becomes possible, and undoubtedly is
of frequent occurrence. The pollen ripens from below upward, and thus the
fall of the pollen, through the successive ripening of the blooms, may
last for three or four days, and there is a great variation in period of
blooming as between individual plants. The silk maintains its receptivity
for pollen for some little time, but for how long a period we do not yet
know from direct observation. It seems, however, true, that closely
following pollination, the silk loses its transparent structure and begins
to shrivel, while before pollination is effected the silk retains its
succulency for several days.--_E. Lewis Sturtevant, Director N. Y. Exp.
Station._


Specialty Farming.

I noticed in THE PRAIRIE FARMER of February 23d, a communication from Cape
Girardeau, Mo., on "The Dignity of Our Calling." It contains some very
good reasoning, but I do not indorse it all, and take this mode of
expressing my views upon the subject. The point upon which I beg leave to
differ from the gentleman is, should a farmer have a smattering idea of
everything pertaining to farming?

I believe that a man should make a specialty of some particular branch of
farming, for it is universally conceded by all competent authority that no
man can succeed in a given pursuit unless his time and energies are
concentrated in that direction, consequently we have successful men in all
the avenues of life--and why? from the simple fact that these men make a
specialty of some particular branch of their calling; they are no
jack-of-all-trades--not by any means.

So it is with farming; the man who endeavors to be proficient in all its
departments is apt to be a failure, while his specialist neighbor
succeeds, simply because he has his course marked out, and bends his
energies in that direction. Life is too short for a man to comprehend
everything. It is true, that the farmer has no fixed law by which to guide
him; however, he must, in measure, be governed by past experience. If the
farmer does his part, God will do the rest. In my opinion, what we want,
is not learning in every branch of farming by the same individual, but we
do want lore in a given direction, and then success will crown our every
effort. Take as an example one of our large machine shops; do we find its
workmen, each one, commencing a machine and completing it in all its
parts. No; each man has a special task to perform, only that and nothing
more. As to farmers' sons longing for other callings, I am forced to admit
that it is a lamentable fact which can not be ignored. I believe the
reason for this is that they are constantly coming in contact with nature
in all her varied forms, and before they have yet reached their majority,
they become inspired with an ambition which is prone to go beyond the
boundary of farm life, hence we find them, step by step, climbing the
ladder of fame. However, we have one consoling fact, and that is, they
make some of the most noted men we have--find them where you may. A
glorious example of this is in the person of a man who rose from the
humble position of plowboy, to that of Chief Executive of the Nation.

A few words more and I am done. If the fathers of this land would have
their sons follow the noble vocation of farming, let them educate them
thoroughly for the branch which they would have them pursue, and by so
doing teach them that proficiency in any given direction is sure to
command respect and success.     SUBSCRIBER.


Field and Furrow.

One of the strong points in preparing horses for spring work is in having
their shoulders in a good, sound condition. With this to start with and
soft and well-fitting collars there need be but little fear of any
difficulty in keeping them all right, no matter how hard the labor horses
have to endure. By keeping the collars well cleared of any dirt which may
accumulate upon them from the sweating of the horse, and by bathing them
daily with cold water, there need be but little fear of bad shoulders.

HUSBANDMAN: Every member of the Elmira Farmers' Club present had used
sapling clover, more or less, and all regarded it with favor, although for
making hay common red clover is worth more, as it is also for pasture. Mr.
Ward expressed the opinion, in which all shared, that there were really
but two varieties of field clover in common use at the North, red clover,
usually called medium, and the large, or sapling clover. The chief
function of the clover root as a fertilizer is in bringing nitrogen from
the lower soil upward within reach of succeeding crops and changing its
form to meet the requirements of the plant and crops that follow.

BROW CHEMICAL CO. CIRCULAR: The wise farmer will change his seed from year
to year. A remarkable feature of the variety in potatoes is that no two
kinds of potato are made up of the same chemical components in precisely
the same proportion. There are now over 300 varieties of potatoes of
greater or less merit. Some are celebrated for their large size, some for
their fineness of texture and some for the great increase which may be
expected from them. One hundred and thirteen years ago there were but two
known varieties of potatoes, one being white, the other red. If the soil
is too poor potatoes starve, if too wet they catch cold, and refuse to
grow to perfection.

FARMER'S ADVOCATE: Spring operations will soon commence, and with these a
demand for good farm hands. The general rule that is followed in this
country is to put off the hiring of men to the last moment, and trust to
chances for some one coming along, and then probably some inferior workman
has to be taken, or none at all. Men who know their business on a farm
will not wait, and are early picked up in the neighborhood in which they
may reside. The trusting to men coming along just at the exact moment you
are crowded, is a bad policy. There should always be profitable employment
for a man in the early spring months before seeding commences, and it will
pay any farmer to secure good farm hands early; and pay them good wages.

PEORIA TRANSCRIPT: We prepared a half acre of ground as good as we knew
how. Upon one-half of this plat we planted one bushel of seed obtained
from Michigan, and upon the other half of home-grown seed, both being of
the variety known as Snowflake. The two lots of seed cut for planting were
similar in appearance, both as regards size and quality. The whole lot
received the same treatment during the growing season. The plants made
about the same growth on the two plats and suffered equally from bugs; but
when it came to digging, those from new seed yielded two bushels of large
potatoes for every one that could be secured on the land planted with seed
of our own growing. This difference in yield could be accounted for on no
other theory than the change in seed, as the quality of seed, soil, and
culture were the same. This leads to the belief that simply procuring seed
of favorite varieties from a distance would insure us good crops at much
less expense than can be done experimenting with new, high-priced seeds.

In another column a Kansas correspondent speaks of the crab grass in an
exceedingly favorable way. We find the following regarding this grass in a
late New York Times: Every Northern farmer knows the common coarse grass
called door-yard grass, which has long, broad leaves, a tough, bunchy
root, and a three-fingered spreading head, which contains large, round
seeds. It is known as Eleusine Indica, and grows luxuriously in open
drains and moist places. It appears late in the summer. This is an
extremely valuable grass in the South. A friend who went to Georgia soon
after the war bought an abandoned plantation on account of the grass
growing upon it. It was this door-yard grass. He pastured sheep upon it
and cut some for hay. Northern baled hay was selling at $30 a ton at that
time. He wrote asking me to buy him two mowers and a baling press, and
went to baling hay for the Southern market, selling his sheep and living
an easy life except in haying time. His three hundred acres of cleared
land has produced an average of 200 tons of hay every year which gives him
about four times as much profit as an acre of cotton would do. Perhaps
there may come an end to this business, and the grass will run out for
want of fresh seed, but with a yearly dressing of Charleston phosphate the
grass has kept up its original vigor. Now why could we not make some use
of this grass, and of others, such as quack-grass, which defy so
persistently all our efforts to destroy them?




[Illustration: Entomological]


Insects in Illinois.

Prof. Forbes, State Entomologist, makes the following report to the State
Board of Agriculture:

"Now that our year's entomological campaign is completed, a brief review
of some of its most important features and results will doubtless be of
interest. Early attention was given to the insects attacking corn in the
ground, before the sprout has appeared above the surface. A surprising
number were found to infest it at this period, the results of their
injuries being usually attributed by farmers to the weather, defective
seed, etc. Among these the seed corn maggot (Anthomyia zeæ) was frequently
noted, and was received from many parts of the State. A small,
black-headed maggot, the larva of a very abundant, gnat-like fly (Seiara),
was excessively common in ground which had been previously in grass, and
attacked the seed corn if it did not germinate promptly and vigorously,
but apparently did not injure perfectly sound and healthy grains. A minute
yellow ant (Solenopsis fugax) was seen actually gnawing and licking away
the substance of the sound kernels in the ground, both before and after
they had sprouted. The corn plant-louse (Aphis maidis) was an early and
destructive enemy of the crop, often throttling the young shoot before it
had broken ground. It was chiefly confined to fields which had been just
previously in corn or grass.

"The chinch-bug was found in spring depositing the eggs for its first
brood of young about the roots of the corn, a habit not hitherto reported.

"With the increasing attention to the culture of sorghum, its insect
enemies are coming rapidly to the front. Four species of plant-lice, two
of them new, made a vigorous attack upon this crop in the vicinity of
Champaign, and two of them were likewise abundant in broom-corn.

"The corn root-worm (Diabrotica longicornis) was occasionally met with in
sorghum, but does not seem likely to do any great mischief to that plant.
It could not be found in broom-corn. In fields of maize, however, it was
again very destructive, where corn had been raised on the same ground a
year or two before. The Hessian Fly did great damage throughout the winter
wheat region of the State, many fields not being worth harvesting in
consequence of its ravages. Several facts were collected tending to show
that it is three brooded in the southern part of the State. Nearly or
quite all the last brood passed the summer as "flax seeds" in the stubble,
where they might easily have been destroyed by general and concerted
action. Fortunately, the summer weather was unfavorable to their
development; and the drouth conspired with their parasites to greatly
diminish their numbers. In the regions under our observation, not one in a
thousand emerged from the midsummer pupa-cases, and numbers of the larvæ
were found completely dried up.

"The wheat straw-worm (Isosoma tritici), a minute, slender, yellow grub,
which burrows inside the growing stem, dwarfing or blighting the forming
head, was abundant throughout the winter wheat region of Southern
Illinois, causing, in some places, a loss scarcely exceeded by that due to
the Hessian Fly. Our breeding experiments demonstrate that this insect
winters in the straw as larvæ or pupa, emerging as an adult fly early in
spring, these flies laying their eggs upon the stems after they commence
to joint. As the flies are very minute, and nearly all are wingless, their
spread from field to field is slow, and it seems entirely within the power
of the individual farmer to control this insect by burning or otherwise
destroying the stubble in summer or autumn, and burning the surplus of the
straw not fed to stock early in spring. A simple rotation of crops,
devoting land previously in wheat to some other grain or to grass, will
answer instead of burning the stubble.

"The life history of the wheat bulb-worm (Meromyza Americana) was
completed this year. The second or summer brood did decided injury to
wheat in Fulton county, so many of the heads being killed that some of the
fields looked gray at a little distance. This species was also injurious
to rye, but much less so than to wheat. It certainly does not attack oats
at all; fields of that grain raised where winter wheat had been destroyed
by it, and plowed up, being entirely free from it, while wheat fields
adjacent were badly damaged. We have good evidence that postponement of
sowing to as late a date as possible prevents the ravages of this insect,
in the same way as it does those of the Hessian Fly.

"The common rose chafer (Macrodactylus subspinosus) greatly injured some
fields of corn in Will county, the adult beetle devouring the leaves.

"The 'flea negro-bug' (Thyreocoris pulicarius) was found injurious to
wheat in Montgomery county, draining the sap from the heads before
maturity, so that the kernel shriveled and ripened prematurely. In parts
of some fields the crop was thus almost wholly destroyed.

"The entomological record of the orchard and the fruit garden is not less
eventful than that of the farm. In extreme Southern Illinois, the forest
tent caterpillar (Clislocampa sylvatica) made a frightful inroad upon the
apple orchard, absolutely defoliating every tree in large districts. It
also did great mischief to many forest trees. Its injuries to fruit might
have been almost wholly prevented, either by destroying the eggs upon the
twigs of the trees in autumn, as was successfully done by many, or by
spraying the foliage of infested trees in spring with Paris green, or
similar poison, as was done with the best effect and at but slight expense
by Mr. David Ayres, of Villa Ridge. Great numbers of these caterpillars
were killed by a contagious disease, which swept them off just as they
were ready to transform to the chrysalis; but vast quantities of the eggs
are now upon the trees, ready to hatch in spring.

"A large apple orchard in Hancock county dropped a great part of its crop
on account of injuries done to the fruit by the plum curculio
(Conotrachelus nenuphar). There is little question that these insects were
forced to scatter through the apple orchard by the destruction, the
previous autumn, of an old peach orchard which had been badly infested by
them.

"In Southern strawberry fields, very serious loss was occasioned by the
tarnished plant-bug (Lygus lineolaris), which I have demonstrated to be at
least a part of the cause of the damage known as the 'buttoning' of the
berry. The dusky plant-bug (Deræcoris rapidus) worked upon the
strawberries in precisely the same manner and at the same time, in some
fields being scarcely less abundant than the other. I have found that both
these species may be promptly and cheaply killed by pyrethrum, either
diluted with flour or suspended in water, and also by an emulsion of
kerosene, so diluted with water that the mixture shall contain about 3 per
cent of kerosene.

"The so-called 'strawberry root-worm' of Southern Illinois proves to be
not one species merely, but three--the larvæ of Colaspsis brunnae, Paria
aterrima and Scelodonta pubescens. The periods and life histories of these
three species are curiously different, so that they succeed each other in
their attacks upon the strawberry roots, instead of competing for food at
the same time. The three together infest the plant during nearly the whole
growing season--Colaspsis first, Paria next, and Scelodonta last. The
beetles all feed upon the leaves in July and August, and may then be
poisoned with Paris green.

"The season has been specially characterized by the occurrence of several
widespread and destructive contagious diseases among insects. Elaborate
studies of these have demonstrated that they are due to bacteria and other
parasitic fungi, that these disease germs may be artificially cultivated
outside the bodies of the insects, and that when sown or sprinkled upon
the food of healthy individuals, the disease follows as a consequence. We
have in this the beginning of a new method of combating insect injuries
which promises some useful results."


Illinois Central Railroad.

The elegant equipment of coaches and sleepers being added to its various
through routes is gaining it many friends. Its patrons fear no accidents.
Its perfect track of steel, and solid road-bed, are a guarantee against
them.




FARM IMPLEMENTS, Etc.


NICHOLS & MURPHY'S
CENTENNIAL WIND MILL.

[Illustration of a windmill]

Contains all the valuable features of his old "Nichols Mills" with none of
their defects. This is the only balanced mill without a vane. It is the
only mill balanced on its center. It is the only mill built on correct
scientific principles so as to govern perfectly.

ALL VANES

Are mechanical devices used to overcome the mechanical defect of forcing
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This mill will stand a heavier wind, run steadier, last longer, and crow
louder than any other mill built. Our confidence in the mill warrants us
in offering the first mill in each county where we have no agent, at
agents' prices and on 30 days' trial. Our power mills have 25 per cent
more power than any mill with a vane. We have also a superior feed mill
adapted to wind or other power. It is cheap, durable, efficient. For
circulars, mills, and agencies, address

NICHOLS & MURPHY, Elgin, Ill.

(Successors to the BATAVIA MANF. CO., of Batavia, Ill.)



     THE CHICAGO
  DOUBLE HAY AND STRAW PRESS

[Illustration of a straw press]

Guaranteed to load more Hay or Straw in a box car than any other, and bale
at a less cost per ton. Send for circular and price list. Manufactured by
the Chicago Hay Press Co., Nos. 3354 to 3358 State St., Chicago. Take cable
car to factory. Mention this paper.



DEDERICK'S HAY PRESSES.

are sent anywhere on trial to operate against all other presses, the
customer keeping the one that suits best.

[Illustration of men working with a hay press]

Order on trial, address for circular and location of Western and Southern
Storehouses and Agents.

TAKE NOTICE.--As parties infringing our patents falsely claim premiums
and superiority over Dederick's Reversible Perpetual Press. Now,
therefore, I offer and guarantee as follows:

FIRST. That baling Hay with One Horse, Dederick's Press will bale to the
solidity required to load a grain car, twice as fast as the presses in
question, and with greater ease to both horse and man at that.

SECOND. That Dederick's Press operated by One Horse will bale faster and
more compact than the presses in question operated by Two Horses, and with
greater ease to both man and beast.

THIRD. That there is not a single point or feature of the two presses
wherein Dederick's is not the superior and most desirable.

Dederick Press will be sent any where on this guarantee, on trial at
Dederick's risk and cost.

P. K. DEDERICK & CO., Albany, N. Y.



Sawing Made Easy

Monarch Lightning Sawing Machine!

Sent on 30 Days Test Trial.

A Great Saving of Labor & Money.

[Illustration of a male figure using a sawing machine]

A boy 16 years old can saw logs FAST and EASY. MILES MURRAY, Portage,
Mich., writes: "Am much pleased with the MONARCH LIGHTNING SAWING MACHINE.
I sawed off a 30-inch log in 2 minutes."  For sawing logs into suitable
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peerless and unrivaled. Illustrated Catalogue, Free. AGENTS WANTED.
Mention this paper. Address MONARCH MANUFACTURING CO., 163 E. Randolph
St., Chicago Ill.



MONARCH HORSE HOE AND CULTIVATOR COMBINED

For Hoeing & Hilling Potatoes, Corn, Onions, Beets, Cabbages, Turnips, &c.

[Illustration of hoe-cultivator]

SENT ON 30 Days' TEST TRIAL.

An immense saving of labor and money. We guarantee a boy can cultivate
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man can the old way. Illustrated Catalogue FREE.  AGENTS WANTED. Mention
this paper. Address

Monarch Mfg. Co., 206 State St., Chicago, Ill.



[Illustration of boiler]

THE PROFIT FARM BOILER

is simple, perfect, and cheap; the BEST FEED COOKER; the only dumping
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corn and potatoes, and save one-half the cost of pork. Send for circular.
D. R. SPERRY & CO., Batavia, Illinois.



"THE BEST IS THE CHEAPEST."

SAW MILLS, ENGINES THRESHERS, HORSE POWERS,

(For all sections and purposes.) Write for Free Pamphlet and Prices to
The Aultman & Taylor Co., Mansfield, Ohio.




REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE
FARMER _one year and, the subscriber gets
a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP
OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most
liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly
agricultural paper in this country._




[Illustration: LIVE STOCK DEPARTMENT]

Stockmen, Write for Your Paper.


Well-informed live stock men estimate the drive from Texas the coming
spring at 325,000 head, unless shipping rates are unusually favorable,
when it may go above 400,000 head.


A careful estimate of the stock on the range near the Black Hills is as
follows: Cattle, 383,900 head; horses, 2,200; sheep, 8,700. It is asserted
that the stock has wintered remarkably well, the loss not exceeding 1-1/2
per cent.


A virulent disease resembling blind staggers has appeared among the horses
of Oregon, and a large number of valuable animals have succumbed to it.
Over 400 have died in two counties. So far the veterinarians have been
unable to stay its progress.


The period of gestation in the mare is in general forty-eight weeks; the
cow forty six weeks; the ewe twenty-one weeks, and the sow sixteen weeks.
Having the date of service, the date at which birth is due may be easily
ascertained. Careful breeders always keep strict record of each animal.


The Illinois State Board of Agriculture has adopted a rule requiring the
slaughter of all sweepstakes animals at the next Fat Stock Show, in order
that the judgment of the committees may be verified as to the quality of
the animals. The premiums for dressed carcasses have been largely
increased over last year.


Polled Aberdeen Cattle.

The subject of our 1st page illustration, Black Prince, is a
representative of that black, hornless race, which had its foundation in
Scotland several hundred years ago, known as Polled Aberdeen-Angus Cattle.
This breed of cattle has grown into very high favor in America during the
last five or six years; so much so, that, while in 1879 the number of
representatives of this race in America were very few, now the demand for
them is so great that the number imported yearly is easily disposed of at
prices ranging from $250 to $2,000. Messrs. Geary Bros., London, Ont., say
that the demand for such cattle during the past winter has never been
equaled in their long experience. As the prevalence of the foot-and-mouth
disease in Great Britain, will, without a doubt cause the importation of
cattle from that country to be prohibited at an early day, it is safe to
say that the value of such stock must rise, as the number of its
representatives in America is limited, and those who have such stock in
their possession fully appreciate their value; and not being under the
necessity of selling, will hold their Aberdeen-Angus cattle unless enticed
by a very high price. Therefore, the coming public sale of Aberdeen-Angus
cattle in Chicago may be looked forward to as going to show unequaled
average prices and especially of individual prize animals.

Black Prince was bought by Messrs. Geary Bros., London, Ont., in Scotland,
and brought to America last year. In him are to be found all the fine
characteristics of his race. He took the second place at the Smithfield
Fat Stock Show of 1883; at the Kansas Fat Stock Show of the same year he
was placed second to the Short-horn steer Starlight; and at the last Fat
Stock Show of Chicago he took first place among the best three-year-olds
of the country. At the time of entry for the Chicago Show he was 1,380
days old, and his weight 2,330 pounds, almost 175 pounds less than he
weighed before leaving Scotland for this country. Besides the prizes above
mentioned, Black Prince won numerous honors in his own country before
coming here.

Their black, glossy, thick coats, their hornless heads, and particularly
their low-set, smooth, round and lengthy bodies are the principal features
of this breed.

Beef consumers will find them in the front rank for yielding wholesome,
nourishing food, juicy, tender, and of the best flavor, free from all
unpalatable masses of fat or tallow. It is these favorable characteristics
which have gained such an excellent, and widespread reputation for the
Aberdeen-Angus cattle. The growing belief that the best breed of beeves is
the one that for a given quantity of food, and in the shortest time will
produce the greatest weight of nutritious food combined with the smallest
amount of bone, tallow, and other waste is going to make these cattle as
popular with our beef consumers and producers generally as they have been
with those who have long been familiar with their many superior qualities.


Grass for Hogs.

With plenty of milk and mill-feed to mix with the corn, good hogs may be
grown without grass. But with corn alone, the task of growing and
fattening a hog without grass costs more than the hog is worth.

To make hog-growing profitable to the farmer, he must have grass. In the
older States where the tame grasses are plenty, it is a very thoughtless
farmer who has not his hog pasture. But out here in Kansas and Nebraska,
where we have plenty of corn, but no grass, except the wild varieties, the
most enterprising of us are at our wits' ends. Hogs will eat these wild
grasses while tender in the spring, and, even without corn, will grow
long, tall, and wonderfully lean, and in the fall will fatten much more
readily than hogs grown on corn. But fattening the lean hogs takes too
much corn. We must have a grass that the hogs will relish, and on which
they will both grow and fatten. They will do this on clover, orchard
grass, bluegrass, and other tame grasses. But we have not got any of
these, nor do we know how to get them. Hundreds of bushels of tame grass
seeds are sold every spring by our implement dealers. A few have succeeded
in getting some grass, but nine out of ten lose their seed. We either do
not know how to grow it, or the seed is not good, or the soil is too new.
The truth, perhaps, lies a little in all three. Our agricultural colleges
are claiming to have success with these grasses, and their experience
would be of value to the farmers if these reports could ever reach them.
Not one farmer in a hundred ever sees them. I know of but one farmer of
sufficient political influence to receive these reports through the mails.
The rest of us can get them for the asking. But not many of us know this,
fewer know whom to ask, and still fewer ask. I do not know a farmer that
orders a single copy. Farmers, living about our county towns, and doing
their trading there, and having leisure enough to loaf about the public
offices, and curiosity enough to scratch through the dust-covered piles of
old papers and rubbish in the corner, are usually rewarded by finding a
copy of these valuable reports. But we, who live far away from the county
seat, do our farming without this aid, and mostly without any knowledge of
their existence. This looks like a lamentable state of agricultural
stupidity. Notwithstanding this dark picture we would all read, and be
greatly profited by these reports, if they were laid on our tables.

If it pays to expend so much labor and money in preparing these reports
and sending them half way to the people, would it not be wise to expend a
little more and complete the journey, by making it the duty of the
assessor to leave a copy on every farmer's table? Compulsory education.

As an explanation of much of the above, it must be remembered that we are
nearly all recently from the East, that we have brought with us our
Eastern experience, education, literature, and household gods; and that
not until we have tried things in our old Eastern ways and failed, do we
realize that we exist under a new and different state of things and slowly
begin to open our eyes to the existence of Western agricultural reports
and papers giving us the conditions on which the best results have been
obtained.

There will be more grass seed planted this spring than ever before, and
the farmers will be guided by the conditions on which the best successes
seem to have been obtained. But this seeding will not give us much grass
for this coming summer. What must we do? I write for our Western farmers
who have no clover, orchard grass, blue grass, but have in their
cultivated fields.


CRAB GRASS.

This grass, the most troublesome weed of the West, smothering our gardens
and converting our growing corn-fields into dense meadows, makes the best
hog pasture in the world, while it lasts. Put hogs into a pasture
containing all the tame grasses, with one corner in crab grass, and the
last named grass will all be consumed before the other grasses are
touched.

Not only do they prefer it to any other grass, but on no grass will they
thrive and fatten so well. Last spring I fenced twelve acres of old stalk
ground well seeded to crab grass. With the first of June the field was
green, and from then until frost pastured sixty large hogs, which, with
one ear of corn each, morning and evening, became thoroughly fat. These
were the finest and cheapest hogs I ever grew.

This grass is in its glory from June till frosts. By sowing the ground
early in oats, this will pasture the hogs until June, when the crab grass
will occupy all the ground, and carry them through in splendid condition,
and fat them, with an ear or corn morning and evening.     A. D. LEE.
CENTERVILLE, KAN.

NOTE.--Many of our readers may be unfamiliar with the variety of grass
spoken of by our correspondent. It is known as crop grass, crab grass,
wire grass, and crow's foot (_Eleusine Indica_). Flint describes it as
follows: Stems ascending, flattened, branching at the base; spikes, two to
five, greenish. It is an annual and flowers through the season, growing
from eight to fifteen inches high, and forming a fine green carpeting in
lawns and yards. It is indigenous in Mississippi, Alabama, and adjoining
States, and serves for hay, grazing, and turning under as a fertilizer. It
grows there with such luxuriance, in many sections, as never to require
sowing, and yields a good crop where many of the more Northern grasses
would fail.--[ED. P. F.]


A Stock Farm and Ranch.

Some years ago Prof. J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, Ill., whom almost
every reader of THE PRAIRIE FARMER in days gone by knows, personally, or
by his writings, in company with one of his sons conceived the idea of
running an Illinois stock farm in connection with a ranch in Texas. The
young animals were to be reared on the cheap lands in the latter State
where care and attention amount to a trifle, and to ship them North to
finish them off for market on the blue grass and corn of the Illinois
farm. To carry out this purpose they purchased nearly 10,000 acres in
Coleman county, Texas, and they converted 1,000 acres in a body in
Montgomery county, Illinois, into a home stock farm. Unfortunately, just
as all things were in readiness for extensive operations, the son died,
leaving the business to Prof. Turner, now nearly an octogenarian and
entirely unable to bear the burden thus forced upon him. As a consequence,
he desires to sell these large and desirable possessions, separate or
together, as purchasers may offer.

The Illinois farm is well fenced and in a high state of cultivation. There
are growing upon it more than 2,000 large evergreens, giving at once
protection to stock and beauty to the landscape. There are also 1,500
bearing fruit trees, a vineyard, and a large quantity of raspberries,
blackberries, currants, etc.

Besides a good farm-house, there is a large barn, in which there are often
fed at one time 150 head of horses, with plenty of room for each animal;
and an abundance of storage room in proportion for grain and hay. Also a
large sheep shed, the feeding capacity of which is 3,000 head. Also a
large hog house, conveniently divided into pens with bins for grain. Other
numerous out-buildings, granary, hay sheds, stock and hay scales, etc.,
etc. There are on the farm twelve miles of Osage orange hedge, the best
kind of fence in the world, in perfect trim and full growth; and four
miles of good rail fence, dividing the farm off into conveniently sized
fields of forty, eighty and one hundred and sixty acres each, access to
which is easily obtained by means of gates which open from each field into
a private central road belonging to the farm, and directly connected with
the stock yards near the house, so that it is not necessary to pass over
other fields in the handling of stock. Stockmen will appreciate this
arrangement. Owing to its special advantages for handling stock, it has
become widely known as a "Model Stock Farm." The lands are all naturally
well drained; no flat or wet land, and by means of natural branches, which
run through every eighty acres, the whole farm is conveniently and easily
watered, by an unfailing supply. There are besides three large wind mills,
with connecting troughs for watering the stock yards and remotest field.
This supply of stock water has never failed. It is therefore specially
adapted for all kinds of stock raising, and is well stocked. It has on it
a fine drove of Hereford cattle and Norman horses, and is otherwise fully
equipped with all the recent improvements in farming implements. This farm
is only about fifty miles from St. Louis, Mo., two miles from a railroad
station, and six miles from Litchfield, Illinois. Besides its location
commercially, and its advantages for handling stock, this farm is in one
of the best wheat and fruit producing sections of Illinois, and has now on
it 200 acres of fine wheat.

The ranch in Texas consists of one body of 9,136 acres of choice land. By
means of an unfailing supply of living water the whole ranch is well
watered, and has besides a very large cistern. The soil is covered with
the Curly Mesquite grass, the richest and most nutritious native stock
grass known in Texas. There is also on the ranch a splendid growth of live
oak trees, the leaves of which remain green the year round, furnishing
shade in summer, and an ample protection for stock in winter.

There is on the ranch a large well built stone house, and also a fine
sheep shed, with bins for 5,000 bushels of grain. This shed is covered
with Florida Cypress shingles and affords protection for 2,000 head of
sheep, and can be used just as well for other kinds of stock. Here can be
bred and raised to maturity at a mere nominal cost, all kinds of cattle,
horses, mules, and other stock, no feed in winter being required beyond
the natural supply of grass. After the stock reaches maturity they can be
shipped to the Illinois Farm; and while all the cattle easily fatten in
Texas enough for the market, still as they are generally shipped to St.
Louis or Chicago, it costs but little more, and greatly increases the
profits, to first ship them to the Illinois Farm, and put them in prime
condition, besides being near the markets, and placing the owner in
position to take advantage of desirable prices at any time. With horses
and mules this is a special advantage readily apparent to every one.

It will be seen at once that any individual with capital, or a stock
company, or partnership of two or more men, could run this farm and ranch
together at a great profit. All the improvements on both being made solely
for convenience and profit and not anything expended for useless show.

I do not write this communication from any selfish motive, for I have not
a penny's worth of interest in either farm or ranch, but I want to let
people who are looking for stock farms know that here is one at hand such
as is seldom found, and at the same time to do my life-long friend and
yours a slight favor in return for the great and lasting benefits he has,
in the past, so freely conferred upon the farmers of the State and
country.

I know these lands can be bought far below their real value, and the
purchaser will secure a rare bargain. I presume the Professor will be glad
to correspond with parties, giving full particulars as to terms.

SUBSCRIBER. MONTGOMERY CO., ILL.


Western Wool-Growers.

The Western wool-growers, in convention at Denver, Colorado, March 13th,
unanimously adopted the following memorial to Congress:

     Whereas, The wool-growers of Colorado, Kansas, Utah,
     Wyoming, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, and Minnesota,
     assembled in convention in the city of Denver, the 13th of
     March, 1884, representing 7,500,000 head of sheep,
     $50,000,000 invested capital, and an annual yield of
     35,000,000 pounds of wool, and

     Whereas, Said Industry having been greatly injured by the
     reduction of the tariff bill of May, 1883, and being
     threatened with total destruction by the reduction of 20
     per cent, as proposed by the Morrison tariff bill just
     reported to the House of Representatives by the Committee
     on Ways and Means; therefore

     Resolved, That we, the wool-growers in convention
     assembled, are opposed to the provisions of the Morrison
     bill now before Congress which aim to make a further
     reduction of 20 per cent on foreign wools and woolens, and
     that we ask a restoration of the tariff of 1867 in its
     entirety as relates to wools and woolens, by which, for the
     first time in the industrial history of the country,
     equitable relations were established between the duties on
     wool and those on woolen goods.

     Resolved, That we pledge ourselves to work for and to aid
     in the restoration of the tariff of 1867 on wools and
     woolens, and request all persons engaged or interested in
     the wool-growing industry to co-operate with us.

     Resolved, That we as wool-growers and citizens pledge
     ourselves to stand by all committees and associations in
     giving full and complete protection to all American
     industries in need of the same, and cordially invite their
     co-operation in this matter.

The memorial concludes with an appeal to Western Senators and
Representatives in Congress to do all in their power to restore the tariff
of 1867.


The Cattle Disease Near Effingham.

Saturday, March 15, I visited the herds of Messrs. Du Brouck, Schooley and
Fannce northeast of Effingham, Illinois, and carefully examined them with
Mr. F. F. Hunt, of the university, as they were reported affected with
foot-and-mouth disease. In each herd diseased cattle were found; about 20
distinctly marked cases, a few others having symptoms. The disease is
unlike anything I have known, but does not resemble foot-and-mouth disease
as described by any authority. Only the hind feet are affected, and these
without ulceration. In most cases "scouring" was first noticed, followed
by swelling above the hoofs. In the most severe cases, the skin cracked
about the pastern joint or at the coronet. In four cases one foot had come
off. Swelling of pastern and "scouring" were the only symptoms in several
cases. The mouth and udders were healthful; appetites good. In one case
there was slight vesicle on nostril and slight inflammation of gum. Some
animals in contact with diseased ones for weeks remained healthful. Others
were attacked after five weeks' isolation. The most marked cases were of
eight to ten weeks standing. But one animal had died.

What we saw is not foot and mouth disease as known abroad, nor is the
contagious character of the disease proven from the cases in these herds.

G. E. MORROW, UNIVERSITY, CHAMPAIGN, ILL.




[Illustration: The Dairy]

Dairymen, Write for Your Paper.


Camembert Cheese.

The Camembert is one of the variety of French cheeses that find ready sale
in England at high prices. Mr. Jenkins describes the process of making
this cheese in a late number of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural
Society of England which information we find condensed in the Dublin
Farmer's Gazette:

The cows are milked three times a day, at 4.30 and 11.30 a. m., and at 6
p. m. In most dairies the evening's milk is highly skimmed in the morning,
butter being made from the cream, and the milk divided into two portions
one of which is added to the morning's and the other to the midday's
milking. The mixture is immediately put into earthen vessels holding
twelve to fifteen gallons each, and after it has been raised to the
temperature of about 86 deg. Fahr., a sufficient quantity of rennet is
added to make the curd fit to be transferred to the cheese moulds in three
or four hours, or, perhaps, a longer interval in winter. The mixture of
the rennet with the milk is insured by gentle stirring, and the pots are
then covered with a square board. The curd is ready for removal when it
does not adhere to the back of the finger placed gently upon it, and when
the liquid that runs from the fingers is as nearly as possible colorless.
The curd is transferred, without breaking it more than can be avoided, to
perforated moulds four inches in diameter. The moulds are placed on reed
mats resting on slightly inclined slabs, made of slate, cement, or other
hard material, and having a gutter near the outer edge. The curd remains
in the moulds twenty-four or even forty-eight hours, according to the
season, being turned upside down after twelve or twenty-four hours; that
is, when sufficiently drained at the bottom. After turning the face of the
cheese, the inside of the mould is sprinkled with salt, and twelve hours
afterward the opposite face and the rim of the cheeses are treated in the
same way. The cheeses are then placed on movable shelves round the walls
of the dairy for a day or two, after which the curing process commences by
the cheeses being transferred to the "drying-room," and there placed on
shelves made of narrow strips of wood with narrow intervals between them,
or of ordinary planks with reed mats or clean rye straw. Here the greatest
ingenuity is exerted to secure as dry an atmosphere and as equable a
temperature as possible--the windows being numerous and small, and fitted
with glass, to exclude air, but not light, when the glass is shut, with a
wooden shutter to exclude both light and air; and with wire gauze to admit
light and air, and exclude flies and winged insects, which are troublesome
to the makers of soft cheese.

The cheeses are turned at first once a day, and afterward every second
day, unless in damp weather, when daily turning is absolutely necessary.
In three or four days after the cheeses are placed in the drying-room they
become speckled; in another week they are covered with a thick crop of
white mold, which by degrees deepens to a dark yellow, the outside of the
cheese becoming less and less sticky. At the end of about a month, when
the cheese no longer sticks to the fingers, it is taken to the finishing
room, where light is nearly excluded, and the atmosphere is kept very
still and slightly damp. Here they remain three or four weeks, being
turned every day or every second day, according to the season, and
carefully examined periodically. When ready for market--that is to say, in
winter, when ripe, and in summer, when half ripe--they are made up in
packets of six, by means of straw and paper, with great skill and
neatness.


Few Words and More Butter.

The Wisconsin Dairymen's Association last year offered prizes for the best
essays on butter-making, the essays not to exceed 250 words. Competition
was active, and many valuable little treatises was the result. The first
prize was won by D. W. Curtis, of Fort Atkinson, and reads as follows. We
commend it to all butter-makers and to all writers of essays as a model of
the boiled-down essence of brevity:

COWS.

Select cows rich in butter-making qualities.

FEED.

Pastures should be dry, free from slough-holes, well seeded with different
kinds of tame grasses, so that good feed is assured. If timothy or clover,
cut early and cure properly. Feed corn, stalks, pumpkins, ensilage and
plenty of vegetables in winter.

GRAIN.

Corn and oats, corn and bran, oil meal in small quantities.

WATER.

Let cows drink only such water as you would yourself.

CARE OF COWS.

Gentleness and cleanliness.

MILKING.

Brush the udder to free it from impurities. Milk in a clean barn, well
ventilated, quickly, cheerfully, with clean hands and pail. Seldom change
milkers.

CARE OF MILK.

Strain while warm; submerge in water 48 degrees. Open setting 60 degrees.

SKIMMING.

Skim at twelve hours; at twenty-four hours.

CARE OF CREAM.

Care must be exercised to ripen cream by frequent stirrings, keeping at 60
degrees until slightly sour.

UTENSILS.

Better have one cow less than be without a thermometer. Churns without
inside fixtures. Lever butter worker. Keep sweet and clean.

CHURNING.

Stir the cream thoroughly; temper to 60 degrees; warm or cool with water.
Churn immediately when properly soured, slowly at first, with regular
motion, in 40 to 60 minutes. When butter is formed in granules the size of
wheat kernels, draw off the buttermilk; wash with cold water and brine
until no trace of buttermilk is left.

WORKING AND SALTING.

Let the water drain out; weigh the butter; salt, one ounce to the pound;
sift salt on the butter, and work with lever worker. Set away two to four
hours; lightly re-work and pack.


A MACHINE that can take hay, corn fodder, grass, and grain and manufacture
them into good, rich milk at the rate of a quart per hour for every hour
in the twenty-four, is a valuable one and should be well cared for. There
are machines--cows--which have done this. There are many thousands of them
that will come well up to this figure for several months in the year, and
which will, besides, through another system of organisms, turn out a calf
every year to perpetuate the race of machines. Man has it in his power to
increase the capacity of the cow for milk and the milk for cream. He must
furnish the motive power, the belts, and the oil in the form of proper
food, shelter, and kindly treatment. By withholding these he throws the
entire machinery out of gear and robs himself.




Compiled Correspondence.


KANE COUNTY, MARCH 17.--Snow is nearly all gone. There is but little frost
in the ground. The spring birds have come. Hay is plenty, winter wheat and
winter rye look green, and have not been winter-killed to any great
extent. Cattle and horses are looking well and are free from disease. We
fear the spread of the foot-and-mouth disease. Every effort should be made
to confine it within its present limits. Its spread in this county of so
great dairy interests would be a great calamity. Our factory men will make
full cream cheese during the summer months. The hard, skim cheese made
last season, and sold at 2 cts per pound, paid the patrons nothing. We
hear of factory dividends for January of $1.60 to $1.66.     J. P. B.


GRAND PRAIRIE, TEX., MARCH 8.--The spring is cold and late here; but
little corn planted yet. Winter oats killed; many have sown again. Farmers
are well up with their work.     G. E. R.

       *     *     *     *     *

Brown's Bronchial Troches will relieve
Bronchitis, Asthma, Catarrh, Consumption and
Throat Diseases. _They are used always with good
success._




[Illustration: VETERINARY]


Symptoms of Foot-and-Mouth Disease.

This disease, which is one of the most easily transmitted of contagious
and infectious diseases of domestic animals, is characterized by the
appearance of vesicles or small bladders on the mucous surfaces and those
parts of the skin uncovered by hair, such as in the mouth, on the gums and
palate, on the tongue, and the internal surface of the lips and cheeks; on
the surface of the udder and teats, and between the claws. The disease
passes through four different stages or periods; but for present purposes
it will be sufficient to merely mention the most prominent of the
successive changes and appearances, as they occur to the ordinary
observer. The incubatory stage, or the time between contamination and the
development of the disease, is very short (from twenty-four hours to one
or two weeks), and the disease is ushered in by the general symptoms of
fever, such as shivering, increased temperature, staring coat, dry muzzle,
dullness and loss of appetite. The animals seek seclusion, preferably in
sheltered places, where they assume a crouched position, or lie down, and
there is more or less stiffness and unwillingness to move. The mouth
becomes hot and inflamed looking, and covered with slime, the breath
fetid; the animal grinds the teeth, smacks with mouth, and has difficulty
in swallowing. There is more or less tenderness of feet and lameness, and
in cows the udder becomes red and tender, the teats swollen, and they
refuse to be milked. Depending upon the intensity of the fever and the
extent to which the udder is affected, the milk secretion will be more or
less diminished, or entirely suspended; but throughout the disease the
quality or constituents of the milk become materially altered; its color
changes to a yellow; it has a tendency to rapid decomposition, and
possesses virulent properties. Soon yellowish-white blisters, of various
sizes, from that of a small pea to a small hickory nut, appear on the
mucous surface within the mouth, and which blisters often in the course of
development become confluent or coalesce. They generally break within two
to three days, and leave bright red, uneven, and ragged sores or ulcers,
to the edges of which adheres shreds of detached epithelial tissue. The
animal now constantly moves the tongue and smacks the mouth, while more or
less copious and viscid saliva continually dribbles from the mouth. The
lameness increases in proportion as the feet are affected, and if the fore
feet are most affected, the animal walks much like a floundered horse,
with the hinder limbs advanced far under the body, and with arched back.
The coronet of the claws, especially toward the heels, becomes swollen,
hot, and tender, causing the animal to lie down most of the time. The
blisters, which appear at the interdigital space of the claws, and
especially at the heels, break in the course of a day and discharge a
thick, straw-colored fluid; the ulcers, which are of intensely red or
scarlet color, soon become covered with exudating lymph, which dries and
forms scabs. On the udder, the blisters appear more or less scattered and
variable, and they are most numerous at the base and on the teats.
Ordinarily, the disease terminates in two or three weeks, while the
animal, which during its progress refuses to partake of any other than
sloppy food, gradually regains strength and flesh, and the udder resumes
its normal functions. The mortality at times has proved very great in this
disease when it has appeared with unusual virulency.


Shyness and Timidity.

In common "horse language," these propensities are confounded one with the
other or else no proper and right distinction is made between them. A
horse may be timid without being shy, though he can hardly be said to be
shy without being timid. Young horses in their breaking are timid,
frightened at every fresh or strange object they see. They stand gazing
and staring at objects they have not seen before, fearful to approach
them; but they do not run away from, or shy at them; on the contrary, the
moment they are convinced there is nothing hurtful in them, they refuse
not to approach or even trample upon them. This the shy horse will not do.
He can not be persuaded to turn toward or even to look at the object he
shies at; much less to approach it.

Timid horses, through usage and experience, get the better of their
timidity, and in time become very opposite to fearful; but shy horses,
unless worked down to fatigue and broken-spiritedness, rarely forget their
old sins. The best way to treat them is to work them, day by day,
moderately for hours together, taking no notice whatever of their shying
tricks, neither caressing nor chastising them, and on no account whatever
endeavoring to turn their heads either towards or away from the objects
shied at.


Glanders.

With a view of shedding light on the important question of the
contagiousness of glanders, we will mention the following deductions from
facts brought forth by our own experience.

1. That farcy and glanders, which constitute the same disease, are
propagable through the medium of stabling, and this we believe to be the
more usual way in which the disease is communicated from horse to horse.

2. That infected stabling may harbor and retain the infection for months,
or even years; and though, by thoroughly cleansing and making use of
certain disinfecting means, the contagion may probably be destroyed, it
would not perhaps be wise to occupy such stables _immediately_ after such
supposed or alleged disinfection.

3. That virus (or poison of glanders) may lie for months in a state of
incubation in the horse's constitution, before the disease breaks out. We
have had the most indubitable evidence of its lurking in one horse's
system for the space of fifteen weeks.

4. That when a stud or stable of horses becomes contaminated, the disease
often makes fearful ravages among them before it quits them; and it is
only after a period of several months' exemption from all disease of the
kind that a clean bill of health can be safely rendered.




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REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the
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[Illustration: HORTICULTURAL]

Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper.


Sand Mulching of Orchard Trees.

In THE PRAIRIE FARMER I notice the interesting note of "O." of Sheboygan
Falls, Wis., on the apparent benefit resulting from sand and manure
mulching of pear trees.

In the very near future I expect to see much of this kind of work done by
commercial orchardists. Already we have many trees in Iowa mulched with
sand.

I wish now to draw attention to the fact that on the rich black prairie
soils west of Saratov--about five hundred miles southeast of Moscow--every
tree in the profitable commercial orchards is mulched with pure river
sand. The crown of the tree when planted is placed about six inches lower
than usual with us in a sort of basin, about sixteen feet across. This
basin is then filled in with sand so that in the center, where the tree
stands, it is three or four inches higher than the general level of the
soil. The spaces between these slight depressions filled with sand are
seeded down to grass, which is not cut, but at time of fruit gathering is
flattened by brushing to make a soft bed for the dropping fruit and for a
winter mulch.

The close observer will not fail to notice good reasons for this
treatment. (1.) The sand mulch maintains an even temperature and moisture
of the surface roots and soil and prevents a rapid evaporation of the
moisture coming up by capillary attraction from the sub soil.

(2.) The soil under the sand will not freeze as deeply as on exposed
surfaces, and we were told that it would not freeze as deeply by two feet
or more as under the tramped grass in the interspaces.

(3.) With the light colored sand about the trees, and grass between, the
lower beds of air among the trees would not be as hot by several degrees
as the exposed surface, even when the soil was light colored clay.

(4.) A bed of sand around the trunks of the trees will close in with the
movement of the top by the summer and autumn winds, thus avoiding the
serious damage often resulting from the swaying of the trunk making an
opening in the soil for water to settle and freeze.

Still another use is made of this sand in very dry seasons, which as with
us would often fail to carry the fruit to perfection. On the upper side of
large commercial orchards, large cisterns are constructed which are filled
by a small steam pump. When it is decided that watering is needed the sand
is drawn out, making a sort of circus ring around the trees which is run
full of water by putting on an extra length of V spouting for each tree.
When one row is finished the conductors are passed over to next row as
needed. To water an orchard of 1,200 trees--after the handy fixtures are
once provided--seems but a small task. After the water settles away, the
sand is returned to its place.

In the Province of Saratov we saw orchards with and without the sand, and
with and without the watering. We did not need to ask if the systematic
management paid. The great crops of smooth apples and pears, and the long
lived and perfect trees on the mulched and watered orchards told the whole
story of the needs of trees planted on black soil on an open plain subject
to extreme variations as to moisture and temperature of air and soil.

J. L. BUDD., IOWA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.


Pear Blight.--No. 2.

The mere "experience" of an individual, whether as a doctor of medicine,
horticulture, or agriculture--however extensive, is comparatively
worthless. Indeed the million "demonstrate it to be mischievous, judging
from the success of quacks and empyrics as to money. An unlimited number
of facts and certificates prove nothing, either as to cause or remedy."

Sir Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory "explained all the phenomena of
light, except one," and he actually assumed, for it "fits." Nevertheless
it will ever remain the most thinkable mode of teaching the laws of light,
and it is not probable that any more than this will ever be accomplished
as to any natural science--if that can be called science about which we
must admit that "it is not so; but it is as if it were so."

Of more than 300 "Osband Summer" which I grafted on the Anger quince
successfully, one remains, and this one was transplanted after they had
fruited in a clay soil, to the same sort of soil between "the old
standard" and a stable, both of which have occupied the same locality and
within twenty yards, during much more than fifty years of my own
observation--this "Osband Summer" flourishes. It has borne fruit in its
present site, but grew so rapidly last year that the blossoms aborted thus
illustrating the large proportion of vital force necessary to the
production of fruit, as the site has a perennial supply of manure from the
old stable. A number of standard trees, of the same variety, developed
beautifully until they attained twenty or thirty feet, but then succumbed
to the blight, after the first effort at fruiting. So also the Beurre
Clairgean etc., etc. Their exposure to the same influences, and their
growth during several years did not occasion the blight, but the debility
which must inevitably attend fruiting seems the most prolific cause.

All the phenomena of pear blight can be accounted for, and we are greatly
encouraged in protecting the trees therefrom if, we assume, it is only the
result of weakness and deficient vitality; if so, as in epidemics, all the
pear trees may be poisoned or ergotized, but only the weakest succumb; and
perhaps this debility may be confined to one limb. The practical value of
this view is manifest, as it is impracticable to avoid using the same
knife, and remove every blighted leaf from the orchard. Moreover, if the
limb is a large one, its prompt removal shocks the vitality of the whole
tree[1] and thus renders other parts more vulnerable. On the contrary
view, the limb may be allowed to drop by natural process, precisely as all
trees in a forest shed their lower limbs, leaving hardly a cicatrice or
scar, and this may be insured at any season by a cord of hemp twine,
firmly bound around the limb. The inevitable strangulation, and the
healing of the stump (without the mycelium of fungi which the knife or saw
inevitably propagates by exposing a denuded surface, if not more directly)
proceed more rapidly than the natural slough of limbs by starvation.
Moreover the fruit may mature on such limbs during their strangulation, as
this may not be perfected before the subsequent winter.

The next practical result of my view is the fundamental importance of all
those means which are calculated to husband the vital force of the tree
during its first effort to fruit; one of these is the use of a soil that
will not produce more than twenty bushels of corn without manure, thus a
large proportion of the setts will be aborted, but one half of what
remains should be removed, and subsequently the area beneath the limbs
should have a wheelbarrow of good compost.     D. S.

  Footnote 1: NOTE.--The shock as to vital force is
     demonstrated by the fact that when young trees are not
     trimmed at all their girth increases more rapidly, and they
     bear fruit sooner. Moreover, when old trees are severely
     pruned (though not half the proportion of wood is removed)
     they fail to bear during the next year. I find that a hemp
     cord about the size of the stem of a tobacco pipe
     (one-fourth inch diameter) will soon become imbedded in the
     bark if firmly tied around a limb, and perhaps this size is
     more efficient than a thicker cord.


The Black Walnut.

The black walnut is without doubt the most valuable tree we have for the
rich lands of the "corn belt," West, and one which is very easily grown
everywhere if the farmer will only learn how to get it started. How few we
see growing on our prairies. Why? Simply because to have it we must grow
it from the nuts. It is nearly impossible to transplant black walnut trees
of any size and have them live; although it is a fact that whenever a
non-professional attempts to grow them from the nuts he is almost sure to
fail, it is also a fact that there is no tree that is more easily grown
from the seed than this, if we only know how to do it.

It is my purpose in this note to tell how to do it, and also how not to do
it.

In the first instance we will suppose a man lives where he can gather the
nuts in the woods. When the nuts begin to fall let him plow deeply the
plot of ground he wishes to plant and furrow it off three or four inches
deep, the distance apart he wishes his rows to be. He will then go to the
woods and gather what nuts he wishes to plant, and plant them at once,
just as they come from the tree, covering them just out of sight in the
furrows. This is all there is of it; simple, is it not? But it will not do
to gather a great wagon box full, and let them stand in it until they
heat, or to throw them in a great heap on the ground and let them lay
there until they heat. It will not do, either, to hull them and let them
lay in the sun a week or two, or hull them, dry them and keep them until
spring, and then plant; none of these plans will do if you want trees. Of
course if the nuts are hulled and planted at once they will grow; but this
hulling is entirely unnecessary. Besides, the hulls seem to act as a
special manure for the young seedlings, causing them to grow more
vigorously.

Next, we will suppose one wishes to plant walnuts where they can not be
had from the woods, but must be shipped in. There seems to be only one
plan by which this can be done safely every time, which is as follows:
Gather the nuts as they fall from the trees--of course when they begin to
fall naturally all may be shaken down at once--and spread them not over a
foot deep, on the bare ground under the shade of trees. Cover out of sight
with straw or leaves, with some sticks to hold in place called a "rot
heap;" then after they are frozen and will stay so, they may be shipped in
bags, boxes, barrels, or in bulk by the car-load, and then, again, placed
in "rot heaps," as above, until so early in the spring as the soil is in
workable condition. Then plant as directed in the fall, except the soil
should be firmly packed around the nuts. Keep free from weeds by good
cultivation, and in due time you will have a splendid grove.

There was an immense crop of walnuts in this district last fall, and
thousands of bushels were put up carefully, in this way, all ready for
shipment before the weather became warm; many more thousands were planted
to grow seedlings from, for, notwithstanding the walnut transplants poorly
when of considerable size, the one year seedlings transplant with as
little loss as the average trees.

There is no tree better adapted for planting to secure timber claims with
than the black walnut, and none more valuable when the timber is grown.
For this purpose the land should be plowed deeply, then harrowed to
fineness and firmness, and furrowed out in rows four, six, eight, or ten
feet apart. The nuts may then be planted as directed. It is best to plant
thickly in the rows, then if too thick they can be thinned out,
transplanting the thinnings, or selling them to the neighbors. They should
be thoroughly cultivated, until large enough to shade the ground, and
thinned out as necessary as they grow larger. A walnut grove thoroughly
cultivated the first ten years will grow at least twenty feet high, while
one not cultivated at all would only grow two to three feet in that time.

D. B. WIER., LACON, ILL.


Notes on Current Topics.

ARBOR DAY.

Why can not Illinois have an Arbor Day as well as Nebraska, or any other
State. There ought to be ten millions of trees planted the coming spring
within its borders--saying nothing of orchard trees--by the roadside, on
lawns, for shade, for wind breaks, for shelter, for mechanical purposes,
and for climatic amelioration. Nearly all our towns and villages need more
trees along the streets or in parks; thousands of our farms are suffering
for them; hundreds of cemeteries would be beautified by them, and
numberless homes would be rendered more pleasant and homelike by an
addition of one, two, or a dozen, to their bleak places. Can not THE
PRAIRIE FARMER start a boom that will lead to the establishment of an
Arbor Day all over the State? Why not? There is yet time.

HOT-BEDS.

For the benefit of those who can not command the usual appliances for
hot-beds, I will say that they can be made so as to answer a good purpose
very cheaply. Take a nice sunny spot that is covered with a sod, if to be
had. Dig off the sod in squares and pile them carefully on the north side
and the ends of the pit, to form the sides of the bed, with a proper
slope. The soil thrown out from the bottom may be banked up against the
sods as a protection. After the bed is finished, the whole may be covered
with boards, to turn the water off. These answer in the place of glass
frames. As the main use for a hot-bed is to secure bottom heat, very good
results can be obtained in these cheaply constructed affairs. After the
seeds are up, and when the weather will permit, the boards must be removed
to give light and air--but replaced at night and before a rain. Of course,
where large quantities of plants are to be grown, of tender as well as
hardy sorts, it would be better and safer to go to the expense of board
frames and glass for covering.

DON'T DO IT.

Of course, all the peach trees, and many of the other stone fruits, and
most of the blackberry and raspberry plants, will show discoloration of
wood when the spring opens--so much so that many will pronounce them
destroyed, and will proceed to cut them away. Don't do it. Peaches have
often been thus injured, and by judicious handling saved to bear crops for
years afterward. But they will need to be thoroughly cut back. Trees of
six or seven years old I have cut down so as to divest them of nearly all
their heads, when those heads seemed badly killed, and had them throw out
new heads, that made large growth and bore good crops the following
season. Cut them back judiciously, and feed them well, but don't destroy
them. And so with the berry plants. Wait and see, before you destroy.

PEARS FROM RUSSIA.

No one who reads Prof. Budd's articles on Russian Pears, can fail to be
interested and struck with the prospect of future successful pear culture
in the United States. It is highly probable that Russia is yet to give us
a class of that fruit that will withstand the rigors of our climate. But
how is this to be accomplished? Individual enterprise can, and doubtless
will, accomplish much in that direction; but the object seems to me to be
of sufficient importance to justify State or National action. The great
State of Illinois might possibly add millions to her resources by giving
material aid in the furtherance of this purpose--and a liberal expenditure
by the General Government, through the Department of Agriculture, or the
American Pomological Society, would be more usefully applied than many
other large sums annually voted. At all events, another season of fruitage
ought not to be allowed to pass without some concerted action for the
purpose of testing the question.

Some of our strongest nurserymen will likely be moving in the work, but
that will not be enough. The propagator of that fruit, however, who will
succeed in procuring from the European regions a variety of pears that
will fill the bill required by the necessities of our soil and climate,
has a fortune at his command.

OLD WINTER

lingers in the lap of spring, truly, this year of grace, 1884. Here it is
the 10th of March, and for over one hundred days we have had
winter--winter; but very few real mild and bright days, such as we had
"when I was a boy." The Mississippi is frozen over still, with no signs of
breaking up, and men, women, and children are sighing for sunshine and
showers, and daisies and violets. The wood and coal bills have been
enormous; the pigs squeal in the open pens, and cattle roam, as usual,
shivering in the lanes and along the streets. The song of a robin
to-morrow morning would be a joyous sound to hear.   T. G.


Prunings.

Tree-worship among the ancients had a most important influence on the
preservation of forests in circumscribed places. Beautiful groves, which
would otherwise have been sacrificed on the altar of immediate utility,
were preserved by the religious respect for trees.--Milwaukee Sentinel.

F. K. Phoenix. "Small trees have larger roots in proportion, (2) they cost
less, (3) expressage of freight is less--expressing small trees is usually
cheaper than freighting large ones, and then so much more speedy, (4) less
labor handling, digging holes, etc., (5) less exposed to high winds which
loosen roots, and kill many transplanted trees, (6) planters can form
heads and train them to their own liking, (7) with good care in, say five
years, they will overtake the common larger sized trees. Without good
care, better not plant any size."

The coming currant is Fay's Prolific. It originated with Lincoln Fay, of
Chautauqua county, N. Y. For many years he endeavored to raise a currant
that would combine the size of the Cherry currant with the productiveness
of the Victoria. To this end he fertilized one with the pollen of the
other, and raised some thousands of seedlings, from out of which he
selected this as the one that most nearly realized his desires. It is now
sixteen years since this seedling was obtained. For some eight or nine
years Mr. Fay tested this variety by the side of all the sorts in
cultivation, until becoming convinced of its superiority in several
particulars over any of these, he planted it extensively for his own
marketing.

At a late meeting of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the currant
worm came in for a good deal of talk. Mr. Satterthwaite said that
hellebore, as we have often printed, was the most effectual "remedy." He
mixed it with water and applied it with a brush or whisk of straw. If not
washed off by rain for twenty-four hours and used every year, the worms
were easily got rid of. Mr. Saunders, Superintendent of the Government
Gardens at Washington, and a gentleman thoroughly conversant with every
branch of horticulture, said that there was nothing so effectual with
insects as London purple, and, though equally poisonous as Paris green,
was much cheaper. Tobacco stems and refuse have also been found of great
value in fruit culture. Pyrethrum, he said, would also kill all sorts of
leaf-eating insects; it is now largely cultivated in California, and is
hardy at least as far north as Washington.

JOSIAH HOOPES in New York Tribune: In Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
where, literally, no pears have been grown of late years, the Kieffer is
doing well. I know of no fruit so variable. I ate specimens last season
finely flavored and delicious; again when they were weak and watery. This
fruit needs thinning on the trees and careful ripening in the house. Don't
understand me to say that Kieffer is "best of all." But here it is the
most profitable for market that I know of, as this is not a pear country,
as are portions of New York State. As we go further south the Kieffer
seems to improve, and I think Mr. Berckmans, of Georgia, will give it a
good name with him. Yes, the Kieffer will command a higher price in
Philadelphia than any other pear, and we think some people there know what
good fruit is. Don't imagine I have any axe on the grindstone in this
matter; pecuniarily the Kieffer is no more to me than the Bartlett or
dozens of other varieties.




[Illustration: FLORICULTURE]

Some New Plants.


ABUTILON THOMSONII PLENA.


It is one of the peculiarities of plant culture, that after a certain
number of years of cultivation, any plant having the properties of
sporting freely, that is, changing greatly from the original wild
character of the plant, will become double. In most cases it first arises
from seed, but with the plant under notice it appears that it was what is
called a bud variation, that is, that from some freak of a particular
branch of a plant of the well-known A. Thomsonii, the ordinary single
flowers were found to be double. This happening on a plant under the eye
of a professional florist was taken off the plant and rooted, and at once
became its established character. This phenomena of variation being
"fixed" by separate propagation, is by no means rare, and not a few of our
choice fruits, flowers, and vegetables had their origin by the same means.
It remains to be seen whether in this case it will be of much value except
as a curiosity, it having precisely the same leaf markings as the
original, which are a very distinct yellow mottling of the leaf in a field
of green, and for which the plant is valuable alone, the flowers being
quite of a secondary character. The flowers are said to be perfectly
double, resembling in form a double hollyhock, color deep orange, shaded
and streaked with crimson. This is the first year it has been sent out,
and we shall not be surprised if it is soon followed by others, for
usually, when the "double" condition of things has arrived no one has a
monopoly of the curiosity.


ALTERNANTHERA AUREA NANA.

This is a charming new plant of decided merit to the carpet style of
bedding or edging, being very compact in growth, easily kept to a line of
the finest character, and producing what is of great importance in the
summer, a line of golden yellow. At times the old kind, A. aurea, would
come very good, but more often it had far too much of a green shade to
furnish the contrast sought after, and, as a result, failed to bring out
the effect the planter studied to produce. It is a fitting companion to A.
amabilis, A. paronychioides, and A. versicolor, and will be hailed with
delight by our park florists and other scientific planters.


BOUVARDIA THOMAS MEEHAN.

Here we have a double scarlet bouvardia from the same raisers, Nanz and
Neuner, that astonished the floral world a few years back, with the double
white B. Alfred Neuner. This new addition, unlike the old, which was
another "bud variation," was secured by a cross between the old B.
leiantha, scarlet with a single flower, and Alfred Neuner, double white.
If this is the real origin of the kind, which we somewhat doubt, for if
our theory is correct, that a certain amount of cultivation predisposes to
double variation, then it is not necessary to cross the double, which in
fact can not be done with a perfectly double flower--the organs of
fructification being wanting with that of a single and seed-producing
kind, to account for the origin of a new double.

As is well known the old leiantha is one of the best scarlets yet, and
this new candidate for favor is said to unite the brilliant color and
profuse blooming qualities of the old favorite B. leiantha with the
perfect double flowers of B. Alfred Neuner.

There are now of this class of plants the three colors--white, scarlet,
and pink--in double as well as single; for instance, a pink President
Garfield sported from and was "fixed" from the white A. Neuner, a year or
two ago.


STATICE SUWOROWII REGAL.

In this we have a right regal plant. We first heard of it from the German
catalogues, early in the past winter. This plant is now offered for sale
by the florists of this country. Its description from the catalogues is as
follows: "One of the finest novelties in the list of showy annuals lately
introduced. Its branching flower spikes, of a very bright rose, with a
crimson shade, appear successively from ten to fifteen on each plant, and
measure, each, fully fifteen to eighteen inches in height, and from
one-half to one inch in breadth; the foliage, laying flat on the ground,
is comparatively small, and completely hidden by the numerous flower
spikes, each leaf being five inches long, and from one-half to two inches
broad, undulated and glaucous. It is constantly in bloom during the summer
and autumn, and when in full bloom is a truly magnificent sight, being one
mass of flowers." This class of plants are great favorites, and we should
judge by the colored flowers and description that this variety is a
decided novelty.


TEA ROSES, WHITE BON SILENE.

This is another new aspirant for favor, and comes out with the high
sounding character of being in a white what the old Bon Silene is as a red
winter tea rose. The description from the catalogue is: "The buds are
larger and more double than its parent (the red B. S.) and will produce
more flower buds than any other white rose in cultivation."

It was raised by Francis Morat, of Louisville, Ky., four years ago; it is
also a "sport," and from the old B. silene. Should it retain the good
flowering qualities, fragrance, and substance of the original kind, with a
pure white bud, it will very soon work its way into popular favor. Usually
a white variation has not the vitality that its colored progenitor had, so
that we say, wait and see.     EDGAR SANDERS.




[Illustration: OUR BOOK TABLE]

Pamphlets, Etc., Received.


A full and detailed account of the Polled Galloway breed of cattle is sent
us by the Rev. John Gillespie, M. A., Dumfries, Scotland. The catalogue
has also an appendix containing a correspondence on Polled-Angus versus
Galloway cattle for the Western States of America.

Jabez Webster's descriptive wholesale and retail price list of fruit and
ornamental nursery stock, etc., Centralia, Ill.

Illustrated catalogue and price list of grape vines, small fruits, etc.
John G. Burrow, Fishkill Village, Dutchess county, N. Y.

The Canadian Entomologist, by William Saunders, London, Ontario. This is
an exceedingly neat little pamphlet, and contains articles upon many of
the most important subjects relating to entomology, by a number of
prominent and well-known writers of the day.

The Argus Almanac for 1884. This almanac is replete with useful
information concerning the Government, public debt, State elections from
1873 to 1883, finances of State of New York, biographical sketches of
State officers and members of the Legislature, etc., etc. Price, 25 cents,
Albany, N. Y.

"A Primer of Horticulture for Michigan Fruit Growers." This pamphlet has
been prepared for the use of beginners in horticulture by Charles W.
Garfield, Secretary of the Michigan State Horticultural Society, and will
be found very helpful to all such. Price, 15 cents.

Waldo F. Brown's illustrated spring catalogue of vegetable and flower
seeds. Oxford, Ohio.

R. H. Allen & Co.'s descriptive catalogue of choice farm, garden, and
flower seeds. Nos. 189 and 191 Water St, N. Y.

The Manifesto, a pamphlet devoted to the interests of our Shaker friends.
Compliments of Charles Clapp, Lebanon, Ohio.


"THE THIRD HOUSE."

Its Good and Bad Members--The Remarkable Experiences of a Close Observer
of Its Workings During a Long Residence at Washington.

[_Correspondence Rochester Democrat._]

No city upon the American continent has a larger floating population than
Washington. It is estimated that during the sessions of Congress
twenty-five thousand people, whose homes are in various parts of this and
other countries, make this city their place of residence. Some come here,
attracted by the advantages the city offers for making the acquaintance of
public men; others have various claims which they wish to present, while
the great majority gather here, as crows flock to the carrion, for the
sole purpose of getting a morsel at the public crib. The latter class, as
a general thing, originate the many schemes which terminate in vicious
bills, all of which are either directed at the public treasury or toward
that revenue which the black-mailing of corporations or private
enterprises may bring.

While walking down Pennsylvania avenue the other day I met Mr. William M.
Ashley, formerly of your city, whose long residence here has made him
unusually well acquainted with the operations of the lobby.

Having made my wants in this particular direction known, in answer to an
interrogative, Mr. Ashley said:

"Yes, during my residence here I have become well acquainted with the
workings of the 'Third House,' as it is termed, and could tell you of
numerous jobs, which, like the 'Heathen Chinee,' are peculiar."

"You do not regard the lobby, as a body, vicious, do you?"

"Not necessarily so, there are good and bad men comprising that body; yet
there have been times when it must be admitted that the combined power of
the 'Third House' has overridden the will of the people. The bad influence
of the lobby can be seen in the numerous blood-bills that are introduced
at every session."

"But how can these be discovered?"

"Easily enough, to the person who has made the thing a study. I can detect
them at a glance."

"Tell me, to what bills do you refer?"

"Well, take the annual gas bills, for instance. They are introduced for
the purpose of bleeding the Washington Gas Light company. They usually
result in an investigating committee which never amounts to anything more
than a draft upon the public treasury for the expenses of the
investigation. Another squeeze is the _abattoir_ bills, as they are
called. These, of course, are fought by the butchers and market-men. The
first attempt to force a bill of this description was in 1877, when a
prominent Washington politician offered a fabulous sum for the franchise."

"Anything else in this line that you think of, Mr. Ashley?"

"Yes, there's the job to reclaim the Potomac flats, which, had it become a
law, would have resulted in an enormous steal. The work is now being done
by the Government itself, and will rid the place of that malarial
atmosphere of which we hear so much outside the city."

"During your residence here have you experienced the bad results of living
in this climate?"

"Well, while I have not at all times enjoyed good health, I am certain
that the difficulty which laid me up so long was not malarial. It was
something that had troubled me for years. A shooting, stinging pain that
at times attacked different parts of my body. One day my right arm and leg
would torture me with pain, there would be great redness, heat and
swelling of the parts; and perhaps the next day the left arm and leg would
be similarly affected. Then again it would locate in some particular part
of my body and produce a tenderness which would well nigh drive me
frantic. There would be weeks at a time that I would be afflicted with an
intermitting kind of pain that would come on every afternoon and leave me
comparatively free from suffering during the balance of the twenty-four
hours. Then I would have terrible paroxysms of pain coming on at any time
during the day or night when I would be obliged to lie upon my back for
hours and keep as motionless as possible. Every time I attempted to move a
chilly sensation would pass over my body, or I would faint from hot
flashes. I suffered from a spasmodic contraction of the muscles and a
soreness of the back and bowels, and even my eyeballs become sore and
distressed me greatly whenever I wiped my face. I became ill-tempered,
peevish, fretful, irritable and desperately despondent."

"Of course you consulted the doctors regarding your difficulty?"

"Consulted them? well I should say I did. Some told me I had neuralgia;
others that I had inflammatory rheumatism, for which there was no cure,
that I would be afflicted all my life, and that time alone would mitigate
my sufferings."

"But didn't they try to relieve your miseries?"

"Yes, they vomited and physicked me, blistered and bled me, plastered and
oiled me, sweat, steamed, and everything but froze me, but without avail."

"But how did you finally recover?"

"I had a friend living in Michigan who had been afflicted in a similar way
and had been cured. He wrote me regarding his recovery and advised me to
try the remedy which cured him. I procured a bottle and commenced its use,
taking a teaspoonful after each meal and at bed-time. I had used it about
a week when I noticed a decrease of the soreness of the joints and a
general feeling of relief. I persevered in its use and finally got so I
could move around without limping, when I told my friends that it was
Warner's Safe Rheumatic Cure that had put me on my feet."

"And do you regard your cure as permanent?"

"Certainly, I haven't been so well in years as I am now, and although I
have been subjected to frequent and severe changes of weather this winter,
I have not felt the first intimation of the return of my rheumatic
trouble."

"Do you object to the publication of this interview, Mr. Ashley?"

"Not at all, sir. I look upon it as a duty I owe my fellow creatures to
alleviate their sufferings so far as I am able, and any communication
regarding my symptoms and cure that may be sent to me at 506 Maine avenue
will receive prompt and careful attention."

"Judging from your recital, Mr. Ashley, there must be wonderful curative
properties about this medicine?"

"Indeed, there is, sir, for no man suffered more nor longer than did I
before this remedy gave me relief."

"To go back to the original subject, Mr. Ashley, I suppose you see the
same familiar faces about the lobby session after session?"

"No, not so much so as you might think. New faces are constantly seen and
old ones disappear. The strain upon lobbyists is necessarily very great,
and when you add to this the demoralizing effect of late hours and
intemperate habits and the fact that they are after found out in their
steals, their disappearance can easily be accounted for."

"What proportion of these blood-bills are successful?"

"A very small percentage, sir. Notwithstanding the power and influence of
the lobby, but few of these vicious measures pass. Were they successful it
would be a sad commentary upon our system of government, and would
virtually annihilate one branch of it. The great majority of them are
either reported adversely or smothered in committee by the watchfulness
and loyalty of our congressmen."     J. E. D.




MISCELLANEOUS.


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[Illustration of a scale]

CHICAGO SCALE CO.

2 TON WAGON SCALE, $40, 3 TON, $50. 4 Ton $60, Beam Box Included.

240 lb. FARMER'S SCALE, $5. The "Little Detective," 1/4 oz. to 25 lb.
$3. 300 OTHER SIZES. Reduced PRICE LIST FREE.

[Illustration of a tool]

FORGES, TOOLS, &c.

BEST FORGE MADE FOR LIGHT WORK, $10. 40 lb. Anvil and Kit of Tools. $10.

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[Illustration of a tile machine]

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[Illustration of a magnetic truss]

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[Illustration: THE PRAIRIE FARMER]


Entered at the Chicago Post Office as Second-Class Matter.

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WHEN SUBSCRIPTIONS EXPIRE.

We have several calls for an explanation of the figures following the
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[Transcriber's Note: Original location of Table of Contents.]



The next fair of the Jefferson County, Wisconsin, Agricultural Society
will be held the second week in September.

       *     *     *     *     *

The potato which has sold for the highest price in Boston all the season
is the Early Rose. This has been one of the most remarkable potatoes known
in the history of this esculent.

       *     *     *     *     *

A Gentleman residing at Milk's Grove, Iroquois county, Illinois has
obtained a patent for a new and cheap building material; this material is
straw and concrete pressed together and bound with wires. He thinks he has
a good thing. Time will tell.

       *     *     *     *     *

The Chamber of Commerce at Lyons, France, protests to the government
against the embargo on American pork. Trichiniasis prevails in various
parts of the German empire. It is traced to the use of uncooked home-grown
pork. Here we score two points in favor of the American hog product.

       *     *     *     *     *

The excellent articles on Silk Culture by E. L. Meyer, Esq., have
attracted very general attention, as is proven by the number of letters we
have received asking for his address. This was unintentionally omitted.
Mr. Meyer resides at Hutchinson, Kan. The article was originally prepared
for the quarterly report of the Kansas Board of Agriculture.

       *     *     *     *     *

Our Indiana friends should remember that in that State, Arbor Day occurs
April 11th. A general effort is being made to interest the teachers,
pupils, and directors of the district schools in the observance of the day
by planting of trees and shrubs in the school yards. It is to be hoped
that the people generally will countenance the observance in all possible
ways.

       *     *     *     *     *

Prof. S. A. Forbes writes us that there is needed for the Library of the
State Natural History Society, back numbers of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for the
following years and half years: 1852, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860,
second half year of 1862, 1864, and 1874. Persons having one or all of
these volumes to dispose of will confer a favor by addressing the
Professor to that effect at Normal, Ill.

       *     *     *     *     *

Florida vegetables are coming into Chicago quite freely. Cucumbers are
selling on South Water street at from $1.50 to $2 per-dozen. They come in
barrels holding thirty dozen. Radishes now have to compete with the
home-grown, hot-house article, and do not fare very well, as the latter
are much fresher. Lettuce is comparatively plenty, as is also celery.
Apples sell at from $4 to $6 per barrel, and the demand is good.

       *     *     *     *     *

Mercedes, the famous Holstein cow owned by Thos. B. Wales, Jr., of Iowa
City, died on the 17th inst., of puerperal fever, having previously lost
her calf. Mercedes enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest milk and
butter cow in the world. Her last year's calf it will be remembered was
sold for $4,500. The cow and calf just dropped were valued at $10,000. The
butter record alluded to was ninety-nine pounds six and one-half ounces in
thirty days. The test was in 1883.

       *     *     *     *     *

The Mark Lane Express in its review of the British grain trade last week
says the trade in cargoes off coast was more active, but the supply bare.
California was taken at 39@41s per quarter. Two cargoes have gone to Havre
at 39s 11-1/2d@39s 3d without extra freight. Seven cargoes have arrived,
ten were sold, eight withdrawn, and one remained. Sales of English wheat
for a week, 59,699 quarters at 37s. 7d. per quarter, against 57,824
quarter at 42s. 2d. the corresponding week of last year.

       *     *     *     *     *

At the next American Fat Stock Show in Chicago, there promises to be an
extensive exhibit of dairy products. The Illinois Dairymen's Association
will have it in charge, and the State Board of Agriculture has decided to
appropriate $500 as a premium fund for the Dairymen's Association. It is
rather strange, yet nevertheless true, that Illinois has never yet had an
exhibition of dairy products at all commensurate with the importance of
the dairy interest of the State. It may now be reasonably predicted that
this remark will not remain true after November next. We have heard
nothing said about it, but it is to be presumed there will be no extra
charge to visit this exhibit. The managers of the Fat Stock Show have not
been satisfied, we believe, with experiments in this direction.

       *     *     *     *     *

Many years ago a young Scotch gardener brought from Mexico to Kenosha,
Wis., a specimen of the Century plant. It was then supposed to be about
twenty years old. For more than forty years this man cared for his pet
with unflagging faithfulness. Dying at the age of sixty-five he left it to
the care of a little daughter of a lady who had shown him kindness. This
girl grew to womanhood and to middle age caring tenderly for the plant.
About two years ago the plant exhibiting signs of blooming, a gentleman
joined with the lady and erected a building for it near the Exposition
building, in this city. Here it has since been, but through carelessness
it was unduly exposed to the terrible freeze of the first week in January
last, and the plant is now past recovery. The lady had expended upon it
about all the means she possessed expecting to reap from admission fees to
see it a rich reward. Thus eighty years of care and constant expense came
to naught in a single night. A neglect to order coal resulted in the fire
going out just when the cold was the most intense. One can hardly imagine
the disappointment and regret of the lady who had nursed it with such care
for nearly a lifetime.


LUMBER AND SHINGLES.

The white pine lumber product of the Northwest last year was according to
latest returns, 7,624,789,786 feet against 3,993,780,000 in 1873, and more
than double what it was in 1874. In 1882 the production was nearly
100,000,000 feet less than last year. The smallest product of the decade
was in 1877--3,595,333,496 feet. What is termed the Chicago District,
including the points of Green Bay, Cheboygan, Manistee, Ludington, White
Lake, Muskegon, Grand Haven, and Spring Lake, and a few scattering mills
gave a product in 1883 of 2,111,070,076 feet. At Ludington and Grand Haven
there has been a decline in the product since 1873; at all the other
points the increase has been considerable, amounting to a total of nearly
800,000,000 feet. The largest cut is on the Mississippi river in what is
known as the West of Chicago District. Here in 1873 the product amounted
to 650,000,000 feet; last year it reached 1,290,062,690 feet. The Saginaw
Valley gives the next greatest yield 961,781,164 feet. The total Saginaw
district gave last year 1,439,852,067 feet against 792,358,000 ten years
ago. The total of the West of Chicago District was 3,134,331,793 against
1,353,000,000 in 1873. The Railroad and Interior Mills District has
increased something over 200,000,000 feet in this period.

In shingles we have the grand product in all the Northwest of
3,964,736,639 against 2,277,433,550 in 1873. The greatest increase was in
the Chicago District as given above, and here Ludington and Grand Haven
come in for an increase at the former place of over 33,000,000, and the
latter of more than 100,000,000. The total production of shingles in 1882
was larger than last year by about 130,000,000, but with that exception
was the largest ever known.

The census of 1880 placed the annual lumber product of the United States
at 18,000,000,000 feet. The Northwest then produced 5,651,295,000 feet or
nearly one-third the entire product of the country. If this ratio has been
uniform since we must now have a yield of over 20,000,000,000 feet. These
are figures of enormous magnitude and of varied import. They mean
employment to an army of men, a large shipping interest, vast investments
in mills and machinery, and vast incomes to owners of pine lands; they
mean houses and barns and fences to a new and populous empire; they mean
numberless farms and millions of live stock. They also signify a rapid
destruction of our immense forests from the face of the earth, enormous
prices for lumber to future generations, and possible floods to devastate
our river bottoms, and drouths to scourge the highlands. They should
impress us all with the necessity and the profitableness of timber
planting on the unsettled and newly settled prairies and in thousands of
places in all the older States.


FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.

Alarming reports from different parts of the country announcing the
presence of foot-and-mouth disease have caused no inconsiderable
excitement among the people and in Government circles. First there came
news of an outbreak in Effingham county, Illinois, then in Louisa county,
Iowa, quickly followed by similar information from Adair county, Missouri.

Dr. Paaren, dispatched to Effingham county by the Governor, reports the
trouble there not foot-and-mouth disease. There does exist a disease
there, however, similar to foot-rot in sheep, that is proving fatal to
many cattle. There have also been outbreaks of disease among cattle near
Duquoin and Xenia, Illinois, which Dr. Paaren has been directed to
investigate.

No official reports as to the disease in Iowa and Missouri have been
received, though Government Veterinary inspectors are now upon the ground
making their investigations. It is said that several hundred head of
cattle are affected in Missouri, though this is probably an exaggeration.

There is no news regarding the disease in Maine.

Reports from Kansas say the infected herds are strictly quarantined, and
that as yet no fresh outbreaks have occurred. It is proposed to annihilate
the five infected herds.

Gov. Glick has convened the Legislature of Kansas in order that proper
measures may be taken to protect the cattle interests of the State.

A Des Moines dispatch dated the 15th, says letters from Louisa county to
the Governor in regard to the new cattle disease were read in the House,
and on motion of Mr. Watrous that body adopted the substitute for the bill
providing for the appointment of a State veterinary surgeon. The
substitute authorizes the veterinary surgeon to destroy all stock affected
with contagious disease. The bill is intended to enable the State to take
action in the foot-and-mouth disease now affecting the stock. Discussion
then followed upon the substitute, which was taken up section by section,
and it was for the most part adopted.

The series of reported outbreaks mentioned has aroused Congress to the
necessity of action. The Senate on Monday passed a joint resolution
appropriating $50,000 for the suppression of the disease in whatever State
or Territory it appears.

It is to be hoped that the Animal Industry bill will at once pass and
become a law. The cattle dealers at the Chicago Union Stock Yards have
organized a Live Stock Exchange, and the first action taken by it is to
fight this bill in Congress. Emory A. Storrs, attorney for the heavy
brokers, is in Washington working might and main for its defeat. He finds
it uphill work, evidently, for on Monday he sent a dispatch to Nelson
Morris in these words: "Send to-day a delegation of strong men; everything
now depends on backing; wire me at once protest; have seen several
senators this morning; advise me when delegation starts; have them stop at
Riggs house."

Acting under this advice the Exchange passed the following resolutions of
"unbelief."

     Whereas, It is the universal sentiment of the Chicago Live
     Stock Exchange, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, that
     the bill now pending before Congress, known as the "Animal
     Industry bill," is dangerous in its design, not called for
     by the condition of the live stock interest in this
     country, and tends to place too much power in the
     Department of Agriculture at Washington; therefore,

     Resolved, That Elmer Washburn, Allan Gregory, F. D.
     Bartlett, B. F. Harrison, and H. H. Conover, members of
     this exchange, be, and hereby are, appointed a committee,
     with instructions to proceed forthwith to Washington, and
     present these resolutions to the proper authorities to
     prevent the passage of said "Animal Industry bill."

     Resolved, Further, that owing to the present excitement
     throughout the United States over the false alarm of
     pleuro-pneumonia and "foot-and-mouth" disease, that we, as
     a body, should express our views fully upon this question.

     1. We do not believe there is such a disease as contagious
     pleuro-pneumonia existing throughout the United States.

     2. We do not believe that such a disease as the
     foot-and-mouth disease exists in either Illinois, Iowa, or
     Kansas.

     3. That at no time within the space of twenty years have
     the cattle, sheep, or hogs of this country been in as
     healthy a condition as at the present time; for while we
     are in favor of strict quarantine laws to prevent any
     importation of disease into this country from abroad, we
     believe if any disease should break out in this State, or
     any other State, that the citizens would be interested
     sufficiently to stamp it out without expense to the
     National Government.

While these resolutions were being discussed Dr. Detmers appeared in the
hall (accidentally of course!) and gave it as his opinion that not a
single case of foot-and-mouth disease existed in America to-day. But the
Doctor has so often put his foot in it in his mouthings about animal
diseases in the past that his beliefs or disbeliefs have little weight
with the public. The Doctor is evidently "put out" because he was not
called upon to visit the infected districts, for he is reported as ending
his harangue by declaring he was tired of working for the Government, and
offered his services to the Live Stock Exchange.

Such, in brief, is a summary of the news of the week concerning the
foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in the States.


PREMIUMS ON CORN.

As briefly stated in a previous issue of THE PRAIRIE FARMER, the Illinois
State Board of Agriculture offers a premium of $100 for the best bushel of
corn (in ear) grown this year in the northern division of the State, and
$50 for the second best bushel: and a like premium for the best and second
best bushel grown in the central and southern divisions. These divisions
correspond with the three judicial divisions of the State. The following
are the conditions:

Each of the parties awarded the first premium to deliver twenty-five
bushels, and each of the parties awarded the second premium to deliver
fifteen bushels of corn in the ear in sacks to the State Board of
Agriculture at Springfield, Ill. The corn delivered to be equal in quality
to the samples awarded the respective premiums. The premiums to be paid
when the premium bushels of corn and the amounts called for are compared
at the rooms of the Department of Agriculture and favorably reported upon
by the committee.

Affidavit as to measurement of land and yield of corn are required.

We suppose also that competitors are to furnish characteristics of soil,
variety of seed, kinds of manure used, mode of cultivation etc., as these
facts would seem to be necessary if the public is to receive the full
benefits of the experiments the premiums are likely to bring out.

It is understood that the corn delivered to the State Board as per above
conditions is to be in some judicious manner distributed to the
corn-growers of the State for planting in 1885.


THE FIRST UNFORTUNATE RESULT.

There recently began in Scotland an earnest movement to induce the British
Government to remove the restrictions regarding the importation of
American cattle, so far at least as to allow the admission of store cattle
for feeding purposes. Meetings have been held in various parts of Scotland
at which petitions like the following were adopted.

     To the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone.

     We, the undersigned, farmers and others, respectfully
     submit that the present law which allows the importation of
     cattle from the United States, and shuts out store cattle,
     is unjust and oppressive to the farmers of this country,
     and enhances the price of meat to the public. We therefore
     crave that her Majesty's Government would open the Scottish
     ports to the introduction of store cattle from the Western
     States where disease does not exist.

At a meeting at Montrose, where the above petition was favorably acted
upon, Mr. Falconer, an Angus farmer, in supporting the motion, said that
the first great remedy for the present depression was to get cheap store
cattle, and that would never be got until they opened their ports to the
Western States of America. He held that if farmers would agree to insist
on live store cattle being allowed to be landed in Britain, they would
soon get them. When they get them, he, if then alive, would be quite
willing to take all the responsibility if they found an unsound or
unhealthy animal amongst them. He appealed to butchers in Montrose, who
had been in the way of killing States or Canadian cattle, if they were not
totally free of disease; and he would like to ask them how many Irish
cattle they killed which were perfectly healthy. If they got stores from
America, they would not effect a saving in price, but, as they all knew,
sound healthy cattle fed much quicker than unsound, and were of better
quality, and thus an additional item of profit would be secured to the
farmer.

Mr. A. Milne, cattle-dealer, Montrose, corroborated Mr. Falconer's
statements as to the healthiness of American stock, while Irish cattle, as
a rule, he said, had very bad livers.

Mr. Adamson, Morphie, said he had recently been in the Western States of
America, and had seen a number of the ranches in Nebraska, Wyoming, and
Colorado. The cattle there were certainly fine animals--well bred, as a
rule, either from Herefords or Short-horns, with a dash of the Texan
cattle in them. When there, he made careful inquiries as to the existence
of disease, and he was universally told that such a thing as epidemic
disease was unknown. No doubt in the southern part of Texas there was a
little Texan fever, but that, like yellow fever, was merely indigenous to
the district. It was never seen out of these parts. He considered it would
be a great boon to the farmers of Scotland if they could get cattle £3 or
£4 cheaper than at present. It would save a very considerable amount of
money in stocking a farm, and would also tell on the profits of the
feeders, and the prices paid by the consumers. They had them to spare in
America in the greatest possible abundance.

At a late meeting of the Prairie Cattle Company, having headquarters in
Scotland, sheriff Guthrie Smith expressed the opinion that the great
profit in the future of American ranch companies must be the trade in
young cattle. He believed that Scottish farmers would ere long get all
their young cattle, not from Ireland, but from the United States. It did
not pay them to breed calves; they were better selling milk. The fattening
of cattle for the butcher was the paying part of the business, but the
difficulty was to get yearlings or two-year-olds at their proper price.

Here promised to arise a new outlet for American stock, and one which most
of us probably never thought of. The proposition had in it the elements
for the building up of a great commercial industry and of affording a new
and rapid impetus to the breeding of cattle upon the plains. But just at
this time comes the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Kansas, Maine,
and Illinois, and of course puts an end to all hopes in this direction,
for many months at least. This is the result of the disease at its first
appearance. Here is prospective loss before the Government veterinary
surgeons fairly reach the field of operations against its spread--the loss
of a trade which would have been worth many millions to the cattle raisers
of the great West. It is to be feared that this is but the beginning of
the losses the disease will entail upon us. Can Congress longer hesitate
in this matter of providing an efficient law for protection from
contagious animal diseases? It would seem not. Our State authorities,
also, must be alert, and render all possible aid in preventing the spread
of this wonderfully infectious disease.

       *     *     *     *     *

We have a large number of letters and postal cards asking where various
seeds, plants, shrubs, trees, silk-worm eggs, bone dust and so on and so
forth to an indefinite extent, may be obtained. We have answered some of
these inquiries by letter, some through the paper, but they still keep
coming. We have one favor to ask of those seeking this sort of
information: First look through the advertisements carefully, and see if
what is wanted is not advertised. The seedsmen's advertisements do not, of
course, enumerate all the parties have for sale, but it may be taken for
granted that they keep nearly all kinds of grass, grain, and vegetable
seeds. We would also say to seedsmen that it will probably be found to pay
them to advertise the seeds of the new grasses, alfalfa, the special
fertilizers, etc., that are now being so much inquired about. We have a
large number of inquiries about where to obtain silk-worm eggs. Persons
who have them certainly make a mistake in not advertising them freely.


Questions Answered.

O. G. B., SHEBOYGAN FALLS, WIS.--Will you give directions which will be
practical for tanning skins or pelts with the fur or hair on by the use of
oak bark?

ANSWER.--We know of no way the thing can be done unless a part of the
methods are used that are employed in the tanning of goat skins for making
Morocco leather. These are: to soak the skins to soften them; then put
them into a lime vat to remove the hair, and after to take the lime out in
a douche consisting of hen and pigeon dung. This done, the skins are then
sewed up so as to hold the tanning liquid, which consists of a warm and
strong decoction of Spanish sumac. The skins are filled with this liquid,
then piled up one above the other and subsequently refilled, two or three
times, or as fast as the liquid is forced through the skins. If the furs
or pelts were first soaked to soften them, all the fatty, fleshy matter
carefully removed, after sewed up as goat skins are, and then filled and
refilled several times with a strong decoction of white oak bark, warm,
but not hot, no doubt the result would prove satisfactory.

DR. J. F. SCHLIEMAN, HARTFORD, WIS.--Are there any works on the
cultivation of the blueberry, and if so could you furnish the same? Do you
know of any parties that cultivate them?

ANSWER.--We have never come across anything satisfactory on the
cultivation of the blueberry except in Le Bon Jardiniere, which says: "The
successful cultivation of the whole tribe of Vacciniums is very difficult.
The shrubs do not live long and are reproduced with much difficulty,
either by layers or seeds." The blueberry, like the cranberry, appears to
be a potash plant, the swamp variety not growing well except where the
water is soft, the soil peaty above and sandy below. The same appears also
to be true of the high land blueberry; the soil where they grow is
generally sandy and the water soft. You can procure Le Bon Jardiniere (a
work which is a treasure to the amateur in fruit and plants) of Jansen,
McClurg & Co., of Chicago, at 30 cents, the franc. Some parties, we think,
offer blueberry plants for sale, but we do not recollect who they are.

H. HARRIS, HOLT'S PRAIRIE, ILL.--Will it do to tile drain land
which has a hard pan of red clay twelve to eighteen inches below the
surface?

ANSWER.--It will do no harm to the land to drain it if there is a hard pan
near the surface, but in order to make tile draining effective on such
land, the drains will have to be at half the distance common on soils
without the hard pan.

SUBSCRIBER, DECATUR, ILL.--In testing seed corn, what per cent must sprout
to be called first-class. I have some twenty bushels of Stowell's
Evergreen that was carefully gathered, assorted, and shelled by hand.
This I have tested by planting twenty-one grains, of which sixteen grew.
How would you class it?

ANSWER.--Ninety-five, certainly. If five kernels out of twenty-one failed
to grow, that would be 31 per cent of bad seed, and we should consider the
quality inferior. But further, if under the favorable condition of trial,
31 percent failed, ten grains in every twenty-one would be almost sure to,
in the field. It was a mistake to shell the corn; seed should always
remain on the cob to the last moment, because if it is machine or
hand-shelled at low temperature, and put away in bulk, when warm weather
comes, it is sure to sweat, and if it heats, the germ is destroyed. Better
spread your corn out in the dry, and where it will not freeze, as soon as
you can.

L. C. LEANIARTT (?) NEBRASKA.--I wish to secure a blue grass pasture in my
timber for hogs. 1. Will it be necessary to keep them out till the grass
gets a good start? 2. Shall I follow the directions you gave Mr. Perkins
in THE PRAIRIE FARMER, February 9? 3. Is not blue grass pasture the best
thing I can give my hogs?

ANSWER.--1. Better do so, and you will then be more likely to get a good
catch and full stand. 2. Certainly, if the conditions are the same. 3.
Blue grass is very good for hogs, but it is improved by the addition of
clover.

C. C. SAMUELS, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.--1. What pears would you recommend for
this latitude? 2. Are there any which do not blight? 3. I have some grape
vines, light colored fruit, but late, Elvira, I think the nurseryman told
me, which appear to be suffering from something at the roots. What is the
phylloxera, and what shall I do to my grape vines if they infest the
roots?

ANSWER.--The Bartlett for _certain_--it being the best of all the
pears--and the Kieffer and Le Conte for _experiment_. If the latter
succeed you will have lots of nice large fruit just about as desirable for
eating as a Ben Davis apple in May. 2. We know of one only, the Tyson, a
smallish summer pear that never blights, at least in some localities,
where all others do more or less. 3. If your Elviras are afflicted with
the phylloxera, a root-bark louse, manure and fertilize them at once, and
irrigate or water them in the warm season. The French vine-growers seem at
last to have found out that lice afflict half starved grape roots, as they
do half starved cattle, and that they have only to feed and water
carefully to restore their vines to health.

J. S. S., SPRINGFIELD, ILL.--I am not a stock man nor a farmer; but I have
some pecuniary interests, in common with others, my friends, in a Kansas
cattle ranch. I am therefore a good deal exercised about this
foot-and-mouth disease. Is it the terrible scourge reported by one cattle
doctor, who, according to the papers, says, "the only remedies are fire or
death." What do you say?

ANSWER.--The disease is a bad one, very contagious, but easily yields to
remedies in the first stages.

THOMAS V. JOHNSON, LEXINGTON, KY.--There is a report here that your draft
horses of all breeds are not crossing with satisfaction on your common
steeds in Illinois, and that not more twenty five in one hundred of the
mares for the last three years have thrown foal, nor will they the present
season. Can you give me the facts?

ANSWER.--Our correspondent has certainly been misinformed, or is an
unconscious victim of local jealousy, as he may easily convince himself by
visiting interior towns, every one of which is a horse market.


Wayside Notes.

BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE.


A neighbor of mine who has been intending to purchase store cattle and
sheep at the Chicago Stock Yards soon, asked me last night what I thought
about his doing so. I asked him if he had read what THE PRAIRIE
FARMER and other papers had contained of late regarding foot-and-mouth
disease in Maine, Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa. He had not; did not take the
papers, and had not heard anything about the disease here or in England.
Then I explained to him, as best I could, its nature, contagious
character, etc., and having a PRAIRIE FARMER in my pocket, read him your
brief history of the ailment in Great Britain. Well, that man was
astonished. Finally, said he, What has that got to do with my question
about buying cattle and sheep at the stock yards? Just this, I replied:
every day there are arrivals at the stock yards of many thousands of
cattle from these infected States. Perhaps some of them come from the very
counties where this disease is known to exist. The disease may break out
any day in scores of places in all these States. It may appear--indeed is
quite likely to do so at the stock yards. For aught I know it may be there
now. The cattle brokers will not be very likely to make known such an
unwelcome fact a minute sooner than they are obliged to. In fact, from
what they have lately been saying about the absurdity of new and stringent
enactments concerning animal diseases, I conclude they will labor to
conceal cases that may really exist. Now you go there to pick up cattle to
consume your pasturage this spring and summer, and don't you see you run
the risk of taking to your home and neighborhood a disease that may cost
you and your neighbors many thousands of dollars? If I were you I would
pick up the stock I want in my own neighborhood and county, even though
not exactly the kind I would like to have, and though it would cost me a
great deal more time and trouble. You see to a Man of the Prairie things
look a little squally in this cattle business. We have all got to be
careful about this thing. We have a terrible enemy at our stable doors and
pasture gates, and we must guard them well. I am not an alarmist, but I
would run any time, almost, rather than get licked, and I have always
tried to keep a lock on the stable door before the horse is stolen. I am
in favor of _in_-trenchment. Perhaps my advice to my neighbor was not
sound, but according to the light I have, I have no desire to recall it
till I hear more from the infected districts.


To show the difference between the winter in Colorado and the States this
way and further west, the Farmer, of Denver, mentions the fact that it
knows a farmer who has had about two hundred acres of new land broken
between the middle of November and the first of March. Still, these
Eastern States have advantages which render them rather pleasant to live
in. Our farmers find plenty of time in fall and spring in which to do
their plowing and sowing, and our severe winters don't seem to hurt the
ground a bit. In fact, I suppose it has got used to them, sort of
acclimated, as it were. We have pretty good markets, low railway fares,
good schools and plenty of them, and we manage to enjoy ourselves just as
well as though we could hitch up to the plow and do our breaking in
December and January. We can't all go to Colorado, Dakota, Montana, or
Washington Territory, nor to those other Edens at the South and Southwest
where a man, so far as winter is concerned, may work about every day in
the year; but don't do so any more than we here at the North where we have
the excuse of severe weather for our laziness between November and April.
I like Colorado and Wyoming, Arkansas and Texas, Alabama and Florida--for
other people who like to make their homes there, but my home is here and I
like it. "I don't _have_ to" plow in winter, and I don't need to. I am
going to try to do my duty and be happy where I am, believing Heaven to be
just as near Illinois as any other State or any Territory.


I read in the dispatches this morning that the barns on a ranch near Omaha
burned the other night. With the barns were consumed twenty-six cows,
eighteen horses, 1,000 bushels of corn and a large lot of hay and oats. In
all the loss amounted to above $10,000 and there was no insurance. From
all over the country and at all times of the year I read almost daily of
similar losses varying from $100 up into the thousands, and the closing
sentence of about nine out of ten of these announcements is "no
insurance." Now I am neither an insurance agent nor a lightning rod
peddler, but there are two luxuries that I indulge in all the time, and
these are an insurance policy to fairly cover my farm buildings and their
contents, and what I believe to be well constructed lightning rods in
sufficient number to protect the property from electric eccentricities.
True, my buildings have never suffered from fire or lightning and these
luxuries have cost me no inconsiderable amount of cash, but this money has
brought me relief from a heap of anxiety, for I know in case my property
is swept away I am not left stripped and powerless to provide for my
family, and I know that it will not be necessary to mortgage the farm to
furnish them a shelter. I don't take _cheap_ insurance either, but invest
my money in the policy of a company which I believe has abundant capital
and is cautiously managed. A wealthy man can take his fire risks in his
own hands if he chooses, but for a man of small or moderate means it seems
to me the height of folly to do so. I would rather go without tobacco or
"biled shirts" than insurance and lightning rods.


I don't know that an American farmer ever had the gout. Certainly I never
heard of such a case. If one does get the ailment, however, if he keeps
bees he always has a sure remedy at hand. A German has discovered that if
a bee is allowed to sting the affected part, a cure is instantaneous. Why
don't Bismarck try this home remedy for his complication of gout and
trichinæ?


REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _one year, and the
subscriber gets a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED
STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class
weekly agricultural paper in this country._




[Illustration: Poultry Notes.]

Poultry-Raisers. Write for Your Paper.


Chicken Chat.

One of my correspondents writes: "My hens don't eat well--they just pick
over the food as if it were not good enough for them--and they don't lay
well; in fact they don't do much of anything except to mope about--not as
if sick, but as if lazy."

Probably you have fed the same thing every day for the last six months,
and the hens are getting tired of it. Hens are like other people--they
like a change of provender once in awhile--especially when confined
indoors. Sometimes over-feeding will cause indigestion, and then the
biddies will exhibit the symptoms you describe. In either case, let the
fowls fast for a whole day, and then for a few days feed lightly with food
that is different from what they have been living on. Give plenty of green
food, also Douglas' mixture in the drinking water twice a week.


Another correspondent wants to know why I always advise giving cooked food
to fowls and chicks when uncooked food is the natural diet.

I advise cooked food because experience has taught me that it is much
better for poultry than the raw articles would be. Because raw bugs and
worms constitute the "natural diet" of fowls in their wild state, it does
not follow that raw meal and potatoes would be the best and most
economical food for our domestic fowls. Other things being equal, chicks
that are fed on cooked food grow fatter, are less liable to disease, and
thrive better generally than those who worry along on uncooked rations.


If you are short of sitting hens and don't own an incubator, make the hens
do double duty. Set two or more at the same time, and when the chicks come
out, give two families to one hen, and set the other over again. To do
this successfully, the chicks must be taken from the nest as soon as dry
and given to the hen that is to raise them; for if a hen once leaves the
nest with her chicks, no amount of moral suasion will induce her to go
back. Before giving the hen fresh eggs, the nest should be renovated and
the hen dusted with sulphur or something to prevent lice.


A lady who commenced raising thoroughbred poultry last season writes me
that she proposes to sell eggs for hatching this season, and asks for
information about advertising, packing eggs, etc.

The advertising is easy enough: all you have to do is to write a copy of
your "ad.," send it to THE PRAIRIE FARMER and other papers that circulate
among farmers, pay the bills, and answer the postals and letters as they
come. But if I were in your shoes, I would "put my foot down" on the
postals to begin with; they don't amount to anything anyway; the people
who ask a long string of questions on a postal card are not, as a rule,
the ones who become customers. Before we went into the poultry business an
old poultry-breeder said: "Don't have anything to do with postals, it
don't pay." We thought differently, but to satisfy ourselves, we kept
track of the postals, and to-day I have the addresses of over 300 people
who wrote us on postal cards. How many of those people became customers?
Just one, and he was an Ohio man. When I go into that branch of the
poultry business again, my advertisements will contain a postscript which
will read thusly: "No postals answered."

And you need not expect that every letter will mean business; people who
have not the remotest idea of buying eggs will write and ask your prices,
etc., and you must answer them all alike. Here is where circulars save
lots of work and postage. I have sent you by mail what I call a model
circular, and from that you can get up something to fit your case. Pack
your eggs in baskets in cut straw or chaff, first wrapping each egg
separately in paper. The eggs should not touch each other or the basket.
Put plenty of packing on top, and with a darning needle and stout twine
sew on a cover of stout cotton cloth. For the address use shipping tags,
or else mark it plainly on the white cotton cover; I prefer the latter
way. A day or two before you ship the eggs send a postal telling your
customer when to look for them; that's all that postals are good for.

Concerning the duplicating of orders in cases of failure of the eggs to
hatch, I quote from one of my old circulars: "I guarantee to furnish fresh
eggs, true to name, from pure-bred, standard fowls, packed to carry safely
any distance. In cases of total failure, when the eggs have been properly
cared for and set within two weeks after arrival, orders will be
duplicated free of charge." I furnished just what I promised, and when a
total failure was reported I sent the second sitting free--though
sometimes I felt sure that the eggs were not properly cared for, and once
a man reported a failure when, as I afterwards learned, eight eggs of the
first sitting hatched. But, generally speaking, my customers were pretty
well satisfied. It sometimes happens that only one or two eggs out of a
sitting will hatch, and naturally the customer feels that he has not
received the worth of his money. In such cases, if both parties are
willing to do just what is right, the matter can be arranged so that all
will be satisfied. And you will sometimes get hold of a customer that
nothing under the heavens will satisfy; when this happens, do just exactly
as you would wish to be done by, and there let the matter end.


If the lady who wrote from Carroll county, Illinois, concerning an
incubator, will write again and give the name of her postoffice, she will
receive a reply by mail.

FANNY FIELD.




[Illustration: THE APIARY.]


Spring Care of Bees.

Although yesterday was very cold and inclement, to-day (March 11th) is
warm and pleasant, and bees that are wintered upon their summer stands
will be upon the wing. It would be well on such days as this to see that
all entrances to hives are open, so that no hindrances may be in the way
of house-cleaning. This is all we think necessary for this month, provided
they have plenty of stores to last until flowers bloom. Handling bees
tends to excite them to brood rearing, and veterans in bee-culture claim
that this uses up the vitality of bees in spring very fast. Although more
young may be reared, it is at the risk of the old ones, as they leave the
hive in search of water; many thus perish, which often results in the
death of the colony, as the young perish for want of nurses. Sometimes,
also, in handling bees early in the season the queens are lost, as they
may fall upon the ground, yet chilled, and perish.

Bees consume food very fast while rearing brood; naturalists tells us that
insects during the larvæ state consume more food than they do during the
remainder of their existence. Where a bee-keeper has been so improvident
as to neglect to provide abundance of stores for his bees he should
examine them carefully, and if found wanting, remove an empty frame,
substituting a full one in its place. Where frames of honey are not to be
had, liquid honey and sugar can be kneaded together, forming cakes, which
can be placed over the cluster. Care should be taken that no apertures are
left, thus forming a way for cold drafts through the hive. These cakes are
thought to excite bees less than when liquid food is given; they have
another advantage, also, viz., bees can cluster upon them while feeding,
and do not get chilled.

Bees that have been wintered in cellars, or special repositories, are
often injured by being removed too early to their summer stands. It would
be better to let them remain, and lower the temperature during warm days
with ice, until warm weather has come to stay. An aged veteran in Vermont
that we visited the season following the disastrous winter of 1880-81,
told us that his neighbors removed their bees from the cellar during a
warm spell early in spring, and they were then in splendid condition. He
let his bees remain until pollen was plentiful, and brought them out, all
being in fine order; by this time his neighbors' colonies were all dead.

Good judgment and care must be exercised in removing bees from the cellar,
or disastrous results will follow. We know of an apiary of over one
hundred colonies that was badly injured, indeed nearly ruined, by all
being taken from the cellar at once on a fine, warm day. The bees all
poured out of the hives for a play spell, like children from school, and
having been confined so long together in one apartment had acquired, in
some measure, the same scent, and soon things were badly mixed. Some
colonies swarmed, others caught the fever, and piled up together in a huge
mass. This merry making may have been fun for the bees, but it was the
reverse of this for the owner, as many queens were destroyed, and hives
that were populous before were carried from the cellar and left without a
bee to care for the unhatched brood.

When it is time to remove bees from the cellar the stands they are to
occupy should be prepared beforehand. They should be higher at the back,
inclining to the front; if the height of two bricks are at the back, one
will answer for the front. This inclination to the front is an important
matter; it facilitates the carrying out of dead bees and debris from the
hive, the escape of moisture, and last, and most important item, bees will
build their comb straight in the frame instead of crosswise of the hive,
and their surplus comb in boxes correspondingly. If a few hives are
removed near the close of the day and put in different parts of the
apiary, the danger from swarming out is avoided, for the bees will become
quiet before morning, and being far apart will not mix up when they have
their play spell. The success of bee-keeping depends upon the faithful
performance of infinite little items.

The many friends of the Rev. L. L. Langstroth will be pained to learn that
he has a severe attack of his old malady and unable to do any mental work.
May the Lord deal kindly and gently with him.

During the last fall and winter he has been the light of many conventions,
and it will be remembered as a pleasant episode in the lives of many
bee-keepers that they had the privilege of viewing his beaming
countenance, hearing the words of wisdom as they escaped from his lips,
and taking the hand of this truly great and good man.

MRS. L. HARRISON


Extracted Honey.

A couple of copies of THE PRAIRIE FARMER have lately come to my desk, a
reminder of my boyhood days, when, in the old home with my father, I used
to contribute an article now and then to its columns. There is an old
scrap-book on the shelf, at my right, now, with some of those articles in
it, published nearly thirty years ago. But my object in writing now is to
add something to Mrs. Harrison's article on Extracted Honey. Last year my
honey crop was about 3,000 pounds, and half of this was extracted, or
slung honey, as we bee-keepers often call it; but for next year I have
decided to raise nearly all comb honey, for the reason that I do not get
customers so readily for extracted honey. I have never extracted until the
honey was all, or nearly all, capped over, and then admitted air into the
vessels holding it, so as to be absolutely sure of getting it "dry," and
proof against souring. This method has given me about half the amount
others obtained by extracting as soon as the combs were filled by the
bees, and ripening afterward.

But in spite of all these precautions I find so much prejudice against
extracted honey, growing out of the ignorance of the public with regard to
this sweet, ignorance equaled only by the ignorance in regard to bees
themselves, that the sale of such honey has been very slow; so slow that
while my comb honey is reduced at this date to about 150 pounds, I have
several ten-gallon kegs of pure white honey still on hand.

Especially is there a prejudice against candied honey, though that is an
absolute test of purity, and it can be readily liquified, as Mrs. H. says,
without injury. When I say that it is an absolute test of purity I mean
that all honey that candies evenly is pure, though some of the best honey
I have ever had never candied at all. In one case I knew the honey to
candy in the combs of a new swarm early in autumn; but some seasons,
particularly very dry ones, it will hardly candy at all. This difference
seems to be due to the varying proportion of natural glucose, which will
crystallize, and levulose, or mellose, which will not crystallize.
Manufactured glucose will not crystallize; and some of our largest honey
merchants, even the Thurbers, of New York, have mixed artificial glucose
with honey to avoid loss by the ignorant prejudice of the public.

WM. CAMM., MORGAN CO., ILL.


South'n Wisconsin Bee-keepers' Ass'n.

The bee-keepers met in Janesville, Wis., on the 4th inst., and organized a
permanent society, to be known as the Southern Wisconsin Bee-keepers'
Association. The following named persons were elected officers for the
ensuing year: President, C. O. Shannon; Vice-President, Levi Fatzinger;
Secretary, J. T. Pomeroy; Treasurer, W. S. Squire.

The regular sessions of the association will be held on the first Tuesday
of March in each year. Special meetings will also be held, the time of
which will be determined at previous meeting.

The object of the association is to promote scientific bee-culture, and
form a bond of union among bee-keepers. Any person may become a member by
signing the constitution, and paying a fee of fifty cents. The next
meeting will be held at the Pember house, Janesville, on the first Tuesday
in May at 10 o'clock A. M. All bee-keepers are cordially invited to
attend. The Secretary, of Edgerton, Rock Co., Wis., will conduct the
correspondence of the association.

       *     *     *     *     *

Blue Stem Spring Wheat!!

The best variety of Prairie Wheat known. Yields largely and is less liable
to blight than any other variety.

Also celebrated Judson Oats for sale in small lots.

Samples, statement of yield and prices sent free upon application to

SAMPSON & FRENCH, Woodstock, Pipestone Co., Minn., or Storm Lake, Iowa.




MAPS.


  RAND, McNALLY & CO.'S NEW RAILROAD
  --AND--
  COUNTY MAP
  --OF THE-- UNITED STATES
  --AND--
  DOMINION OF CANADA.

Size, 4x2-1/2 feet, mounted on rollers to hang on the wall. This is an
ENTIRELY NEW MAP, Constructed from the most recent and authentic sources.

  --IT SHOWS--
  _ALL THE RAILROADS_,
  --AND--
  Every County and Principal Town
  --IN THE--
  UNITED STATES AND CANADA.

A useful Map In every one's home, and place of business. Price, $2.00.

Agents wanted, to whom liberal inducements will be given. Address

RAND, McNALLY & CO., Chicago, Ill.

By arrangements with the publishers of this Map we are enabled to make the
following liberal offer: To each person who will remit us $2.25 we will
send copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER one Year and THIS MAP POST-PAID. Address

PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO.,  CHICAGO. ILL.




PUBLICATIONS.


MARSHALL M. KIRKMAN'S BOOKS ON RAILROAD TOPICS.

DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A RAILROAD MAN

If You Do, the Books Described Below Point the Way.

The most promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day
is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the
service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life
on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books
descriptive of railway operations, who has been connected continuously
with railroads as a subordinate and officer for 27 years. He was brought
up on a farm, and began railroading as a lad at $7 per month. He has
written a number of standard books on various topics connected with the
organization, construction, management and policy of railroads. These
books are of interest not only to railroad men but to the general reader
as well. They are indispensable to the student. They present every phase
of railroad life, and are written in an easy and simple style that both
interests and instructs. The books are as follows:

  "RAILWAY EXPENDITURES THEIR EXTENT,
  OBJECT AND ECONOMY."-A Practical
  Treatise on Construction and Operation.
  In Two Volumes, 850 pages                        $4.00

  "HAND BOOK OF RAILWAY EXPENDITURES."--Practical
  Directions for Keeping the Expenditure Accounts   2.00

  "RAILWAY REVENUE AND ITS COLLECTION."--And
  Explaining the Organization of Railroads          2.50

  "THE BAGGAGE, PARCEL AND MAIL TRAFFIC OF
  RAILROADS."--An interesting work on this
  important service; 425 pages                      2.00

  "TRAIN AND STATION SERVICE."--Giving The Principal
  Rules and Regulations governing Trains; 280 pages 2.00

  "THE TRACK ACCOUNTS OF RAILROADS."--And how
  they should be kept. Pamphlet                     1.00

  "THE FREIGHT TRAFFIC WAY-BILL."--Its Uses
  Illustrated and Described. Pamphlet                 50

  "MUTUAL GUARANTEE."--A Treatise on Mutual
  Suretyship. Pamphlet                                50

Any of the above books will be sent post-paid on receipt of price, by

PRAIRIE FARMER PUBLISHING CO., 150 Monroe St. CHICAGO, ILL.

Money should be remitted by express, or by draft check or post office
order.



YOU can secure a nice RUBBER GOSSAMER CIRCULAR, or a nice decorated
CHAMBER SET, or a nice imported GOLD BAND, or MOSS ROSE TEA SET, or
a nice WHITE GRANITE DINNER SET FREE, in exchange for a few hours' time
among your friends, getting up a little club order for our choice TEAS,
COFFEES, Etc., at much lower prices than stores sell them. We are the
cheapest Tea House east of San Francisco. A GUARANTEE given to each Club
member. TESTIMONIALS and full particulars for getting up Clubs FREE. Write
at once to the old reliable SAN FRANCISCO TEA CO., 1445 State St.,
CHICAGO. Mention this paper.--A reliable firm--_Editor_.



CORN, GRASS, AND FRUIT FARMS BY ANDREWS & BABCOCK, HUMBOLDT, KAN. Money
Loaned netting investors 7 per cent. Write us.




Silk Culture.

Osage for Silk-Worms.


In a private letter to the editor of THE PRAIRIE FARMER Dr. L. S.
Pennington, of Whiteside County, Illinois, says: "Many thanks for your
instructive articles on Silk Culture. Could the many miles of Osage orange
found in this State be utilized for this purpose, the industry would give
employment to thousands of dependent women and children, by which means
they could make themselves, at least in part, self-supporting. I hope that
you will continue to publish and instruct your many readers on this
subject."

Anent this subject we find the following by Prof. C. V. Riley in a late
issue of the American Naturalist:

"There is a strong disposition on the part of those who look for making
money by the propagation and sale of mulberry trees, to underrate the use
of Osage orange as silk-worm food. We have thoroughly demonstrated, by the
most careful tests, on several occasions, that when Maclura aurantiaca is
properly used for this purpose, the resulting silk loses nothing in
quantity or quality, and we have now a strain of Sericaria mori that has
been fed upon the plant for twelve consecutive years without
deterioration. There has been, perhaps, a slight loss of color which, if
anything, must be looked upon as an advantage. It is more than likely, how
ever, that the different races will differ in their adaptability to the
Maclura, and that for the first year the sudden transition to Maclura from
Morus, upon which the worms have been fed for centuries, may result in
some depreciation. Mr. Virion des Lauriers, at the silk farm at Genito,
has completed some experiments on the relative value of the two plants,
which he details in the opening number of the Silk-Grower's Guide and
Manufacturer's Gazette. Four varieties of worms were reared. The race
known as the "Var" was fed throughout on mulberry leaves. The "Pyrenean"
and "Cevennes" worms were fed throughout on leaves and branches of Osage
orange, while the "Milanese" worms were fed on Maclura up to the second
molt and then changed to mulberry leaves. At the close examples of each
variety of cocoons were sent to the Secretary of the Silk Board at Lyons,
and appraised by him The Maclura-fed cocoons were rated at 85 cents per
pound, those raised partly on Osage and partly on mulberry at 95 cents per
pound, and those fed entirely on mulberry at $1.11 per pound.

"This, Mr. des Lauriers thinks, seems to show that the difference between
Maclura and Morus as silk-worm food is some 'twenty-five to thirty per
cent in favor of the latter, while it is evident that the leaf of the
Osage orange can be used with some advantage during the first two ages of
the worms, thus allowing the mulberry tree to grow more leafy for feeding
during the last three ages.' The experiment, although interesting, is not
conclusive, from the simple fact that different races were used in the
different tests and not the same races, so that the result may have been
due, to a certain extent, to race and not to food."


SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL.

A writer in an English medical journal declares that the raising of the
head of the bed, by placing under each leg a block of the thickness of two
bricks, is an effective remedy for cramps. Patients who have suffered at
night, crying aloud with pain, have found this plan to afford immediate,
certain, and permanent relief.


California stands fifth in the list of States in the manufacture of salt,
and is the only State in the Union where the distillation of salt from sea
water is carried on to any considerable extent. This industry has
increased rapidly during the last twenty years. The production has risen
from 44,000 bushels in 1860 to upwards of 880,000 bushels in 1883.


The amount of attention given to purely technical education in Saxony is
shown by the fact that there are now in that kingdom the following
schools: A technical high school in Dresden, a technical State institute
at Chemnitz, and art schools in Dresden and Leipzig, also four builders'
schools, two for the manufacture of toys, six for shipbuilders, three for
basket weavers, and fourteen for lace making. Besides these there are the
following trade schools supported by different trades, foundations,
endowments, and districts: Two for decorative painting, one for
watchmakers, one for sheet metal workers, three for musical instrument
makers, one for druggists (not pharmacy), twenty-seven for weaving, one
for machine embroidery, two for tailors, one for barbers and hairdressers,
three for hand spinning, six for straw weaving, three for wood carving,
four for steam boiler heating, six for female handiwork. There are,
moreover, seventeen technical advanced schools, two for gardeners, eight
agricultural, and twenty-six commercial schools.


The Patrie reports, with apparent faith, an invention of Dr. Raydt, of
Hanover, who claims to have developed fully the utility of carbonic acid
as a motive agent. Under the pressure of forty atmospheres this acid is
reduced to a liquid state, and when the pressure is removed it evaporates
and expands into a bulk 500 times as great as that it occupied before. It
is by means of this double process that the Hanoverian chemist proposes to
obtain such important benefits from the agent he employs. A quantity of
the fluid is liquified, and then stowed away in strong metal receptacles,
securely fastened and provided with a duct and valve. By opening the valve
free passage is given to the gas, which escapes with great force, and may
be used instead of steam for working in a piston. One of the principal
uses to which it has been put is to act as a temporary motive power for
fire engines. Iron cases of liquified carbonic acid are fitted on to the
boiler of the machine, and are always ready for use, so that while steam
is being got up, and the engines can not yet be regularly worked in the
usual way, the piston valves can be supplied with acid gas. There is,
however, another remarkable object to which the new agent can be directed,
and to which it has been recently applied in some experiments conducted at
Kiel. This is the floating of sunken vessels by means of artificial
bladders. It has been found that a bladder or balloon of twenty feet
diameter, filled with air, will raise a mass of over 100 tons. Hitherto
these floats have been distended by pumping air into them through pipes
from above by a cumbrous and tedious process, but Dr. Raydt merely affixes
a sufficient number of his iron gas-accumulators to the necks of the
floats to be used, and then by releasing the gas fills them at once with
the contents.




DAIRY SUPPLIES, Etc.


THE DAVIS SWING CHURN.

The Most Popular Churn on the Market.

[Illustration of a swing churn]

Because it makes the most butter. Because no other Churn works so easy.
Because it makes the best grained butter. Because it is the easiest
cleaned. It has no floats or paddles inside. Also the Eureka Butter
Worker, the Nesbitt Butter Printer, and a full line of Butter Making
Utensils for Dairies and Factories. Send for Illustrated Circulars.

VERMONT FARM MACHINE CO., Bellows Falls, Vt.



The Cooley Creamer

[Illustration of a creamer]

Saves in labor its entire cost every season. It will produce enough more
money from the milk to Pay for itself every 90 days over and above any
other method you can employ. Don't buy infringing cans from irresponsible
dealers. By decision of the U. S. Court the Cooley is the only Creamer or
Milk Can which can be used water sealed or submerged without infringement.
Send for circular to

JOHN BOYD, Manufacturer, 199 LAKE ST., CHICAGO, ILL.



CHOCOLATES.


GRATEFUL--COMFORTING.

EPPS'S COCOA.

BREAKFAST.

"By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations
of digestion and nutrition, and by a careful application of the fine
properties of well-selected Cocoa, Mr. Epps has provided our breakfast
tables with a delicately flavored beverage which may save us many heavy
doctors' bills. It is by the judicious use of such articles of diet that a
constitution may be gradually built up until strong enough to resist every
tendency to disease. Hundreds of subtle maladies are floating around us
ready to attack wherever there is a weak point. We may escape many a fatal
shaft by keeping ourselves well fortified with pure blood and a properly
nourished frame."--_Civil Service Gazette._

Made simply with boiling water or milk. Sold only in half-pound tins by
Grocers, labeled thus:

JAMES EPPS & CO., Homoeopathic Chemists, London, England.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.



MISCELLANEOUS.


3% LOANS,

For men of moderate means. Money loaned in any part of the country.
Address, with 2-cent stamp.

MICHIGAN LOAN & PUB. CO., CHARLOTTE, MICH.



[Illustration of a ring]

This Elegant Solid Plain Ring, made of Heavy 18k. Rolled Gold plate,
packed in Velvet Casket, warranted 5 years, post-paid. 45c., 3 for
$1.25. 50 Cards, "Beauties," all Gold, Silver, Roses, Lilies, Mottoes,
&c., with name on, 10c., 11 packs for a $1.00 bill and this Gold Ring
FREE.

U. S. CARD CO., CENTERBROOK, CONN.



SEEDS, Etc.


THE DINGEE & CONARD CO'S BEAUTIFUL EVER-BLOOMING

ROSES

The Only establishment making a SPECIAL BUSINESS of ROSES. 60 LARGE HOUSES
for ROSES alone. We GIVE AWAY, in Premiums and Extras, more ROSES than
most establishments grow. Strong Pot Plants suitable for immediate bloom
delivered safely, post-paid, to any post office. 5 splendid varieties, your
choice, all labeled, for $1; 12 for $2; 19 for $3; 26 for $4; 35 for $5;
75 for $10; 100 for $13. Our NEW GUIDE, _a complete Treatise on the Rose_,
70 pp, _elegantly illustrated_ FREE

THE DINGEE & CONARD CO., Rose Growers, West Grove, Chester Co., Pa.



1884--SPRING--1884.

TREES

Now is the time to prepare your orders for NEW and RARE Fruit and
Ornamental Shrubs, Evergreens, ROSES, VINES, ETC. Besides many desirable
Novelties; we offer the largest and most complete general Stock of Fruit
and Ornamental Trees in the U. S. Abridged Catalogue mailed free. Address

ELLWANGER & BARRY, Mt. Hope Nurseries, Rochester, N. Y.



[Illustration of trees]

FOREST TREES.

_Largest Stock in America._

Catalpa Speciosa, Box-Elder, Maple, Larch, Pine, Spruce, etc.

_Forest and Evergreen Tree Seeds._

R. Douglas & Sons, _WAUKEGAN, ILL._



EVERGREENS

For everybody. Nursery grown, all sizes from 6 inches to 6 feet. Also

EUROPEAN LARCH AND CATALPA

and a few of the Extra Early Illinois Potatoes. Price List FREE. Address

D. HILL, Nurseryman, Dundee, Ill.



FOREST TREE SEEDS!

I offer a large stock of Walnuts, Butternuts, Ash, and Box Elder Seeds,
suitable for planting. All the growth of 1883. I control the entire stock
of the

SALOME APPLE,

a valuable, new, hardy variety. Also a general assortment of Nursery
stock. Send for catalogue, circular, and price lists. Address

BRYANT'S NURSERY, Princeton, Ill.



SEED CORN.

  Yellow and White Dent,
   Michigan Early Yellow Dent,
    Chester-White King Phillip,
     Yellow Yankee, Etc., Etc.

Also the Celebrated MURDOCK CORN.

L. B. FULLER & CO., 60 State St., Chicago.



CUTHBERT RASPBERRY PLANTS!

10,000 for sale at Elmland Farm by

L P. WHEELER, Quincy, Ill.



SPECIALTY FOR 1884.

200 bush. Onion sets, 20,000 Asparagus roots, Raspberry and Strawberry
roots, and Champion Potatoes. Italian Bees a specialty. Send for price
list for 1884.

SEND EARLY TO A. J. NORRIS, Cedar Falls, Iowa.



SEEDS

Our new catalogue, best published. Free _to all_. 1,500 _varieties_,
300 _illustrations_. You ought to have it.

BENSON, MAULE & Co., Philadelphia, Pa.



A Descriptive, Illustrated Nursery Catalogue and Guide to the Fruit and
Ornamental Planter. Sent free to all applicants.

WM. H. MOON, Morrisville, Bucks Co., Pa.



SEED CORN

NORTHERN GROWN, VERY EARLY. Also Flower Vegetable and Field Seeds 44 New
Varities of Potatoes Order early. Catalogue Free.

FRED. N. LANG, Baraboo, Wis.



[Illustration of a fruit evaporator]

CULLS AND WINDFALL APPLES

Worth 50 Cents Per Bushel Net.

SAVE THEM BY THE

"PLUMMER PATENT PROCESS."

Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue and full Particulars mailed free.

PLUMMER FRUIT EVAPORATOR CO., No. 118 Delaware St., Leavenworth, Kan.

When you write mention the Prairie Farmer.



FERRY'S SEED ANNUAL FOR 1884

Will be mailed FREE to all applicants and to customers of last year
without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and
directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc.
Invaluable to all.

D.M. FERRY & CO. DETROIT, Mich.



[Illustration of a cabbage with a face]

J. B. ROOT & CO.'S

Illustr'd Garden Manual of VEGETABLE and FLOWER SEEDS, ready for all
applicants. Market Gardeners

SEEDS a Specialty. Write for Wholesale Price List. --> SENT FREE

ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS.



FLORAL GIFTS!

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50 CARDS

SOUVENIRS OF FRIENDSHIP Beautiful designs, name neatly printed, 10c. 11
PACKS, this Elegant Ring, Microscopic Charm and Fancy Card Case, $1. Get
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NORTHFORD CARD CO., Northford, Conn.



ONION SEED FOR SALE.

Early Red Globe, Raised In 1883.

JAMES BAKER, Davenport, Iowa.



NEW CHOICE VARIETIES OF SEED POTATOES

A Specialty. Twenty-five kinds. Will not be under-sold. Satisfaction
guaranteed. Send postal, with full address, for prices.

BEN F. HOOVER, Galesburg, Illinois.



FOR SALE

One Hundred Bushels of Native Yellow Illinois Seed Corn, grown on my
farm, gathered early and kept since in a dry room. Warranted to grow.
Price $2 per bu. H.P. HUMPHREYS & SON, Sheffield, Ill.



Onion Sets

Wholesale & Retail

J. C. VAUGHN, _Seedsman_, 42 LaSalle St., CHICAGO, Ill.



MARYLAND FARMS.--Book and Map _free_,

by C. E. SHANAHAN, Attorney, Easton, Md.



NOW

Is the time to subscribe for THE PRAIRIE FARMER. Price only $2.00 per year
is worth double the money.



Peter Henderson & Co's

COLLECTION OF SEEDS AND PLANTS

embraces every desirable Novelty of the season, as well as all standard
kinds. A special feature for 1884 is, that you can for $5.00 select
Seeds or Plants to that value from their Catalogue, and have included,
without charge, a copy of Peter Henderson's New Book, "Garden and Farm
Topics," a work of 250 pages, handsomely bound in cloth, and containing a
steel portrait of the author. The price of the book alone is $1.50.
Catalogue of "Everything for the Garden," giving details, free on
application.

PETER HENDERSON & CO. SEEDSMEN & FLORISTS, 35 & 37 Cortlandt St., New York.



GARDEN SEEDS.

DIRECT FROM THE FARM AT THE LOWEST WHOLESALE RATES.

SEED CORN that I know will grow; White Beans, Oats, Potatoes, ONIONS,
Cabbage, Mangel Wurzel, Carrots, Turnips, Parsnips, Celery, all of the
best quality. Catalogue with directions of cultivation FREE. --> SEEDS
FOR THE CHILDREN'S  GARDEN. 25 per cent. discount. Let the children send
for my Catalogue AND TRY MY SEEDS. They are WARRANTED GOOD or money
refunded.

Address JOSEPH HARRIS, Moreton Farm, Rochester, N.Y.



SEEDS

ALBERT DICKINSON,

Dealer in Timothy, Clover, Flax, Hungarian, Millet, Red Top, Blue Grass,
Lawn Grass, Orchard Grass, Bird Seeds, &c.

POP-CORN.

  Warehouses {115, 117 & 119 KINZIE ST.
             {104, 106, 108 & 110 Michigan St.

OFFICE. 115 KINZIE ST., CHICAGO, ILL.


FAY GRAPES

Currant HEAD-QUARTERS.

ALL BEST, NEW AND OLD.

SMALL, FRUITS AND TREES. LOW TO DEALERS AND PLANTERS. Stock First-Class.
Free Catalogues.  GEO. S. JOSSELYN, Fredonia, N. Y.




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weekly agricultural paper in this country._




[Illustration: HOUSEHOLD.]

  For nothing lovelier can be found
  In woman than to study _household_ good.--_Milton._


How He Ventilated the Cellar.

The effect of foul air upon milk, cream, and butter was often alluded to
at the Dairymen's meeting at DeKalb. A great bane to the dairyman is
carbonic acid gas. In ill ventilated cellars it not only has a pernicious
effect upon milk and its products, but it often renders the living
apartments unhealthful, and brings disease and death to the family. In the
course of the discussion Mr. W. D. Hoard, President of the Northwestern
Dairymen's Association, related the following incident showing how easily
cellars may be ventilated and rendered fit receptacles for articles of
food:

"In the city of Fort Atkinson, where I do reside, Mr. Clapp, the president
of the bank told me that for twenty years he had been unable to keep any
milk or butter or common food of the family in the cellar. I went and
looked at it, and saw gathered on the sleepers above large beads of
moisture, and then knew what was the matter. The cellar was full of foul
air. I said to him, 'Prof. Wilkins is here and will tell you in a few
moments how to remedy this difficulty, and make your cellar a clean and
wholesome apartment of your house.' I went down and got the professor, and
he went up and looked at the cellar, and he says, 'for ten dollars I will
put you in possession of a cellar that will be clean and wholesome.' He
went to work and took a four-inch pipe, made of galvanized iron, soldered
tightly at the joints, passing it down the side of the cellar wall until
it came within two inches of the bottom of the cellar, turned a square
elbow at the top of the wall, carried it under the house, under the
kitchen, up through the kitchen floor and into the kitchen chimney, about
four feet above where the kitchen stovepipe entered. You know the kitchen
stove in all families is in operation about three times a day. The heat
from this kitchen stove acting on the column of air in that little pipe
caused a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum, and the result was that in
twenty-four hours that little pipe had drawn the entire foul air out of
the cellar, and he has now a perfect cellar. I drop this hint to show you
that it is within easy reach of every one, for the sum of only about ten
dollars, to have a perfectly ventilated cellar. This carbonic acid gas is
very heavy. It collects in the cellar and you can not get it out unless
you dip it out like water, or pump it out; and it becomes necessary to
apply something to it that shall operate in this way."

This is a matter of such importance, and yet so little thought about, that
we had designed having an illustration made to accompany this article, but
conclude the arrangment is so simple that any one can go to work and adapt
it to the peculiar construction of his own house, and we hope thousands
will make use of Mr. Hoard's suggestion.


An Old Roman Wedding.

As far as the nuptial ceremony itself was concerned, the Romans were in
the habit of celebrating it with many imposing rites and customs, some of
which are still in use in this country. As soon, therefore, as the
sooth-sayer had taken the necessary omens, the ceremony was commenced by a
sheep being sacrificed to Juno, under whose special guardianship marriage
was supposed to rest. The fleece was next laid upon two chairs, on which
the bride and bridegroom sat, over whom prayers were then said. At the
conclusion of the service the bride was led by three young men to the home
of her husband. She generally took with her a distaff and spindle filled
with wool, indicative of the first work in her new married life--spinning
fresh garments for her husband. Five torches were carried to light her.

The threshold of the house was gaily decorated with flowers and garlands;
and in order to keep out infection it was anointed with certain unctuous
perfumes. As a preservative, moreover, against sorcery and evil
influences, it was disenchanted by various charms. After being thus
prepared, the bride was lifted over the threshold, it being considered
unlucky for her to tread across it on first entering her husband's house.
The musicians then struck up their music, and the company sang their
"Epithalamium." The keys of the house were then placed in the young wife's
hands, symbolic of her now being mistress. A cake, too, baked by the
vestal virgins, which had been carried before her in the procession from
the place of the marriage ceremony to the husband's home, was now divided
among the guests. To enhance the merriment of the festive occasion, the
bridegroom threw nuts among the boys, who then, as nowadays enjoyed
heartily a grand scramble.


Mr. Smith's Stovepipe.

Once upon a time there lived a certain man and wife, and their name--well,
I think it must have been Smith, Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. One chilly day
in October Mrs. Smith said to her husband: "John, I really think we must
have the stove up in the sitting-room." And Mr. Smith from behind his
newspaper answered "Well." Three hundred and forty-six times did Mr. and
Mrs. Smith repeat this conversation, and the three hundred and
forty-seventh time Mr. Smith added: "I'll get Brown to help me about it
some day."

It is uncertain how long the matter would have rested thus, had not Mrs.
Smith crossed the street and asked neighbor Brown to come over and help
her husband set up a stove, and as she was not his wife he politely
consented and came at once.

With a great deal of grunting, puffing, and banging, accompanied by some
words not usually mentioned in polite society, the two men at last got the
stove down from the attic. Mrs. Smith had placed the zinc in its proper
position, and they put the stove way to one side of it, but of course that
didn't matter.

Then they proceeded to put up the stovepipe. Mr. Smith pushed the knee
into the chimney, and Mr. Brown fitted the upright part to the stove. The
next thing was to get the two pieces to come together. They pushed and
pulled, they yanked and wrenched, they rubbed off the blacking onto their
hands, they uttered remarks, wise and otherwise.

Presently it occurred to Mr. Smith that a hammer was just the thing that
was needed, and he went for one. Mr. Brown improved the opportunity to
wipe the perspiration from his noble brow, totally oblivious of the fact
that he thereby ornamented his severe countenance with several landscapes
done in stove blacking. The hammer didn't seem to be just the thing that
was needed, after all. Mr. Smith pounded until he had spoiled the shape of
the stovepipe, and still the pesky thing wouldn't go in, so he became
exasperated and threw away the hammer. It fell on Mr. Brown's toe, and
that worthy man ejaculated--well, it's no matter what he ejaculated. Mr.
Smith replied to his ejaculation, and then Mr. Brown went home.

Why continue the tale? Everybody knows that Mr. Smith, after making a
great deal of commotion, finally succeeded in getting the pipe into place,
that he was perfectly savage to everybody for the rest of the day, and
that the next time he and Brown met on the street both were looking
intently the other way.

But there is more to tell. It came to pass in the course of the winter
that the pipe needed cleaning out. Mrs. Smith dreaded the ordeal, both for
her own sake and her husband's. It happened that the kitchen was presided
over by that rarest of treasures, a good-natured, competent hired girl.
This divinity proposed that they dispense with Mr. Smith's help in
cleaning out the pipe, and Mrs. Smith, with a sigh of relief, consented.
They carefully pulled the pipe apart, and, holding the pieces in a
horizontal position that no soot might fall on the carpet, carried it into
the yard.

After they had swept out the pipe and carried it back they attempted to
put it up. That must have been an unusually obstinate pipe, for it
steadily refused to go together. The minds of Mrs. Smith and her housemaid
were sufficiently broad to grasp this fact after a few trials; therefore
they did not waste their strength in vain attempts, but rested, and in an
exceedingly un-masculine way held a consultation. The girl went for a
hammer, and brought also a bit of board. She placed this on the top of the
pipe, raised her hammer, Mrs. Smith held the pipe in place below, two
slight raps, and, lo, it was done.

See what a woman can do. This story is true, with the exception of the
names and a few other unimportant items. I say, and will maintain it, that
as a general thing a woman has more brains and patience and less stupidity
than a man. I challenge any one to prove the contrary.--_N. E. Homestead._


Progress.

In the course of a lecture on the resources of New Brunswick, Professor
Brown, of the Ontario Agricultural College, told the following story by an
Arabian writer:

"I passed one day by a very rude and beautifully situated hamlet in a vast
forest, and asked a savage whom I saw how long it had been there. 'It is
indeed an old place,' replied he. 'We know it has stood there for 100 years
as the hunting home of the great St. John, but how long previous to that
we do not know.'

"One century afterward, as I passed by the same place, I found a busy
little city reaching down to the sea, where ships were loading timber for
distant lands. On asking one of the inhabitants how long this had
flourished, he replied: 'I am looking to the future years, and not to what
has gone past, and have no time to answer such questions.'

"On my return there 100 years afterward, I found a very smoky and
wonderfully-populous city, with many tall chimneys, and asked one of the
inhabitants how long it had been founded. 'It is indeed a mighty city,'
replied he. 'We know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors there
on this subject are as ignorant as ourselves.'

"Another century after that as I passed by the same place, I found a much
greater city than before, but could not see the tall chimneys, and the air
was pure as crystal; the country to the north and the east and the west,
was covered with noble mansions and great farms, full of many cattle and
sheep. I demanded of a peasant, who was reaping grain on the sands of the
sea-shore, how long ago this change took place? 'In sooth, a strange
question!' replied he. 'This ground and city have never been different
from what you now behold them.' 'Were there not of old,' said I, 'many
great manufacturers in this city?' 'Never,' answered he, 'so far as we
have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.'

"On my return there, 100 years afterward, I found the city was built
across the sea east-ward into the opposite country; there were no horses,
and no smoke of any kind came from the dwellings.

"The inhabitants were traveling through the air on wires which stretched
far into the country on every side, and the whole land was covered with
many mighty trees and great vineyards, so that the noble mansions could
not be seen for the magnitude of the fruit thereof.

"Lastly, on coming back again, after an equal lapse of time, I could not
perceive the slightest vestige of the city. I inquired of a very old and
saintly man, who appeared to be under deep emotion, and who stood alone
upon the spot, how long it had been destroyed. 'Is this a question,' said
he, 'from a man like you? Know ye not that cities are not now part of the
human economy? Every one travels through the air on wings of electricity,
and lives in separate dwellings scattered all over the land; the ships of
the sea are driven by the same power, and go above or below as found to be
best for them. In the cultivation of the soil,' said he, 'neither horse
nor steam-power are employed; the plow is not known, nor are fertilizers
of any more value in growing the crops of the field. Electricity is
carried under the surface of every farm and all over-head like a net; when
the inhabitants require rain for any particular purpose, it is drawn down
from the heavens by similar means. The influence of electricity has
destroyed all evil things, and removed all diseases from among men and
beasts, and every living thing upon the earth. All things have changed,
and what was once the noble city of my name is to become the great meeting
place of all the leaders of science throughout the whole world.'"


A Family Jar.

"Yes," said Mrs. Gunkettle, as she spanked the baby in her calm, motherly
way, "it's a perfect shame, Mr. G., that you never bring me home anything
to read! I might as well be shut up in a lunatic asylum."

"I think so, too," responded the unfeeling man.

"Other people," continued Mrs. Gunkettle, as she gave the baby a marble to
swallow, to stop its noise, "have magazines till they can't rest."

"There's one," said Mr. G., throwing a pamphlet on the table.

"Oh, yes; a horrid old report of the fruit interests of Michigan; lots of
news in that!" and she sat down on the baby with renewed vigor.

"I'm sure it's plum full of currant news of the latest dates," said the
miserable man. Mrs. Gunkettle retorted that she wouldn't give a fig for a
whole library of such reading, when 'apple-ly the baby shrieked loud
enough to drown all other sounds, and peace was at once restored.


Mouce Traps and Other Sweetemetes.

The following advertisement is copied from the Fairfield Gazette of
September 21, 1786, or ninety-seven years ago, which paper was "printed in
Fairfield by W. Miller and F. Fogrue, at their printing office near the
meeting house."

              Beards taken, taken of, and Registurd
                                by
                         ISSAC FAC-TOTUM
                 Barber, Peri-wig maker, Surgeon,
                   Parish Clerk, School Master,
                    Blacksmith and Man-midwife.

     SHAVES for a penne, cuts hair for two pense, and oyld and
     powdird into the bargain. Young ladys genteeely Edicated;
     Lamps lited by the year or quarter. Young gentlemen also
     taut their Grammer langwage in the neatest manner, and
     great care takin of morels and spelin. Also Salme singing
     and horse Shewing by the real maker! Likewice makes and
     Mends, All Sorts of Butes and Shoes, teches the Ho! boy and
     Jewsharp, cuts corns, bleeds. On the lowes Term--Glisters
     and Pur is, at a peny a piece. Cow-tillions and other
     dances taut at hoam and abrode. Also deals holesale and
     retale--Pirfumerry in all its branchis. Sells all sorts of
     stationary wair, together with blacking balls, red herrins,
     ginger bread and coles, scrubbing brushes, trycle, Mouce
     traps, and other sweetemetes, Likewise. Red nuts, Tatoes,
     sassages and other gardin stuff.

     P. T. I teches Joggrefy, and them outlandish kind of
     things----A bawl on Wednesday and Friday. All pirformed by
     Me.                     ISAAC FAC-TOTUM.

       *     *     *     *     *

  A SONNET ON A BONNET.


  A film of lace and a droop of feather,
  With sky-blue ribbons to knot them together;
  A facing (at times) of bronze-brown tresses,
  Into whose splendor each furbelow presses;
  Two strings of blue to fall in a tangle,
  And chain of pink chin In decorous angle;
  The tip of the plume right artfully twining
  Where a firm neck steals under the lining;
  And the curls and braids, the plume and the laces.
  Circle about the shyest of faces,
  Bonnet there is not frames dimples sweeter!
  Bonnet there is not that shades eyes completer!
  Fated is he that but glances upon it,
  Sighing to dream of that face in the bonnet.
                   --_Winnifred Wise Jenks._

       *     *     *     *     *

Little Pleasantries.


A Sweet thing in bonnets: A honey bee.


It will get so in Illinois, by and by, that the marriage ceremony will run
thus: "Until death--or divorce--do us part."


He had been ridiculing her big feet, and to get even with him she replied
that he might have her old sealskin sacque made over into a pair of
ear-muffs.


A Toronto man waited until he was 85 years old before he got married. He
waited until he was sure that if he didn't like it he wouldn't have long
to repent.


How a woman always does up a newspaper she sends to a friend, so that it
looks like a well stuffed pillow, is something that no man is woman enough
to understand.


"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Ramsbothom, speaking of her invalid uncle, "the
poor old gentleman has had a stroke of parenthesis, and when I last saw
him he was in a state of comma."


"Uncle, when sis sings in the choir Sunday nights, why does she go behind
the organ and taste the tenor's mustache?" "Oh, don't bother me, sonny; I
suppose they have to do it to find out if they are in tune."


A couple of Vassar girls were found by a professor fencing with
broomsticks in a gymnasium. He reminded the young girls that such an
accomplishment would not aid them in securing husbands. "It will help us
keep them in," replied one of the girls.


A clergyman's daughter, looking over the MSS. left by her father in his
study, chanced upon the following sentence: "I love to look upon a young
man. There is a hidden potency concealed within his breast which charms
and pains me." She sat down, and blushingly added: "Them's my sentiments
exactly, papa--all but the pains."


"My dear," said a sensible Dutchman to his wife, who for the last hour had
been shaking her baby up and down on her knee: "I don't think so much
butter is good for the child." "Butter? I never give my Artie any butter;
what an idea!" "I mean to say you have been giving him a good feed of milk
out of the bottle, and now you have been an hour churning it!"


We wish to keep the attention of wheat-raisers fixed upon the Saskatchewan
variety of wheat until seeding time is over, for we believe it worthy of
extended trial. Read the advertisement of W. J. Abernethy & Co. They will
sell the seed at reasonable figures, and its reliability can be depended
upon.




[Illustration: OUR YOUNG FOLKS]


  LITTLE DILLY-DALLY.

  I don't believe you ever
   Knew any one so silly
  As the girl I'm going to tell about--
   A little girl named Dilly,
     Dilly-dally Dilly,
      Oh, she is very slow,
     She drags her feet
     Along the street,
      And dilly-dallies so!

  She's always late to breakfast
   Without a bit of reason,
  For Bridget rings and rings the bell
   And wakes her up in season.
     Dilly-dally Dilly,
      How can you be so slow?
     Why don't you try
     To be more spry,
      And not dilly-dally so?

  'Tis just the same at evening;
   And it's really quite distressing
  To see the time that Dilly wastes
   In dreaming and undressing.
     Dilly-dally Dilly
      Is always in a huff;
     If you hurry her
     Or worry her
      She says, "There's time enough."

  Since she's neither sick nor helpless,
   It is quite a serious matter
  That she should be so lazy that
   We still keep scolding at her.
     Dilly-dally Dilly,
      It's very wrong you know,
     To do no work
     That you can shirk,
      And dilly-dally so.


Uncle Jim's Yarn.

Old "Uncle Jim," of Stonington, Conn., ought to have a whole drawer to
himself, for nothing short of it could express the easy-going enlargement
of his mind in narratives. Uncle Jim was a retired sea captain, sealer,
and whaler, universally beloved and respected for his lovely disposition
and genuine good-heartedness, not less than for the moderation of his
statements and the truthful candor of his narrations. It happened that one
of the Yale Professors, who devoted himself to ethnological studies, was
interested in the Patagonians, and very much desired information as to the
alleged gigantic stature of the race. A scientific friend, who knew the
Stonington romancer, told the Professor that he could no doubt get
valuable information from Uncle Jim, a Captain who was familiar with all
the region about Cape Horn. And the Professor, without any hint about
Uncle Jim's real ability, eagerly accompanied his friend to make the
visit. Uncle Jim was found in one of his usual haunts, and something like
the following ethnological conversation ensued:

Professor--They tell me, Capt. Pennington, that you have been a good deal
in Patagonia.

Uncle Jim--Made thirty or forty voyages there, sir.

Professor--And I suppose you know something about the Patagonians and
their habits?

Uncle Jim--Know all about 'em, sir. Know the Patagonians, sir, all, all of
'em, as well as I know the Stonington folks.

Professor--I wanted to ask you, Captain, about the size of the
Patagonians--whether they are giants, as travelers have reported?

Uncle Jim--No, sir--shaking his head slowly, and speaking with the modest
tone of indifference--no, sir, they are not. (It was quite probable that
the Captain never had heard the suggestion before). The height of the
Patagonian, sir, is just five feet nine inches and a half.

Professor--How did you ascertain this fact, Captain?

Uncle Jim--Measured 'em, sir--measured 'em. One day when the mate and I
were ashore down there, I called up a lot of the Patagonians, and the mate
and I measured about 500 of them, and every one of them measured five feet
nine inches and a half--that's their exact height.

Professor--That's very interesting. But, Captain, don't you suppose there
were giants there long ago, in the former generations? All the travelers
say so.

Uncle Jim--Not a word of truth in it, sir--not a word. I'd heard that
story and I thought I'd settle it. I satisfied myself there was nothing in
it.

Professor--But how could you know that they used not to be giants? What
evidence could you get? Mightn't the former race have been giants?

Uncle Jim--Impossible, sir, impossible.

Professor--But how did you satisfy yourself?

Uncle Jim--Dug 'em up, sir--dug 'em up speaking with more than usual
moderation. I'd heard that yarn. The next voyage, I took the bo'sen and
went ashore; we dug up 275 old Patagonians and measured 'em. They all
measured exactly five feet nine inches and a half; no difference in
'em--men, women, and all ages just the same. Five feet nine inches and a
half is the natural height of a Patagonian. They've always been just that.
Not a word of truth in the stories about giants, sir.--_Harper's
Magazine_.


Puddin' Tame's Fun.

"Nice child, very nice child," observed an old gentleman, crossing the
aisle and addressing the mother of the boy who had just hit him in the eye
with a wad of paper. "How old are you, my son?"

"None of your business," replied the youngster, taking aim at another
passenger.

"Fine boy," smiled the old man, as the parent regarded her offspring with
pride. "A remarkably fine boy. What is your name, my son?"

"Puddin' Tame!" shouted the youngster, with a giggle at his own wit.

"I thought so," continued the old man, pleasantly. "If you had given me
three guesses at it, that would have been the first one I would have
struck on. Now, Puddin', you can blow those things pretty straight, can't
you?"

"You bet!" squealed the boy, delighted at the compliment. "See me take
that old fellow over there!"

"No, no!" exclaimed the old gentleman, hastily. "Try it on the old woman I
was sitting with. She has boys of her own, and she won't mind."

"Can you hit the lady for the gentleman, Johnny?" asked the fond parent.

Johnny drew a bead and landed the pellet on the end of the old woman's
nose. But she did mind it, and, rising in her wrath, soared down on the
small boy like a blizzard. She put him over the line, reversed him, ran
him backward till he didn't know which end of him was front, and finally
dropped him into the lap of the scared mother, with a benediction whereof
the purport was that she'd be back in a moment and skin him alive.

"She didn't seem to like it, Puddin'," smiled the gentleman, softly.
"She's a perfect stranger to me, but I understand she is a matron of
truants' home, and I thought she would like a little fun; but I was
mistaken."

And the old gentleman sighed sweetly as he went back to his seat.


The Alphabet.

The discovery of the alphabet is at once the triumph, the instrument and
the register of the progress of our race. The oldest abecedarium in
existence is a child's alphabet on a little ink-bottle of black ware found
on the site of Cere, one of the oldest of the Greek settlements in Central
Italy, certainly older than the end of the sixth century B. C. The
Phoenician alphabet has been reconstructed from several hundred
inscriptions. The "Moabite Stone" has yielded the honor of being the most
ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze plates found in Lebanon in
1872, fixed as of the tenth or eleventh century, and therefore the
earliest extant monuments of the Semitic alphabet. The lions of Nineveh
and an inscribed scarab found at Khorsabad have furnished other early
alphabets; while scarabs and cylinders, seals and gems, from Babylon and
Nineveh, with some inscriptions, are the scanty records of the first epoch
of the Phoenician alphabet. For the second period, a sarcophagus found in
1855, with an inscription of twenty-two lines, has tasked the skill of
more than forty of the most eminent Semitic scholars of the day, and the
literature connected with it is overwhelming. An unbroken series of coins
extending over seven centuries from 522 B. C. to 153 A. D., Hebrew
engraved gems, the Siloam inscription discovered in Jerusalem in 1880,
early Jewish coins, have each and all found special students whose
successive progress is fully detailed by Taylor. The Aramæan alphabet
lived only for seven or eight centuries; but from it sprang the scripts of
five great faiths of Asia and the three great literary alphabets of the
East. Nineveh and its public records supply most curious revelations of
the social life and commercial transactions of those primitive times.
Loans, leases, notes, sales of houses, slaves, etc., all dated, show the
development of the alphabet. The early Egyptian inscriptions show which
alphabet was there in the reign of Xerxes. Fragments on stone preserved in
old Roman walls in Great Britain, Spain, France, and Jerusalem, all supply
early alphabets.

Alphabets have been affected by religious controversies, spread by
missionaries, and preserved in distant regions by holy faith, in spite of
persecution and perversion. The Arabic alphabet, next in importance after
the great Latin alphabet, followed in eighty years the widespread religion
of Mohammed; and now the few Englishmen who can read and speak it are
astonished to learn that it is collaterally related to our own alphabet,
and that both can be traced back to the primitive Phoenician source.

Greece alone had forty local alphabets, reduced by careful study to about
half a dozen generic groups, characterized by certain common local
features, and also by political connection.

Of the oldest "a, b, c's" found in Italy, several were scribbled by
school-boys on Pompeian walls, six in Greek, four in Oscan, four in Latin;
others were scratched on children's cups, buried with them in their
graves, or cut or painted for practice on unused portions of mortuary
slabs. The earliest was found as late as 1882, a plain vase of black ware
with an Etruscan inscription and a syllabary or spelling exercise, and the
Greek alphabet twice repeated.


What a Child Can Do.

"Pa, I have signed the pledge," said a little boy to his father, on coming
home one evening; "will you help me keep it?"

"Certainly," said the father.

"Well, I have brought a copy of the pledge; will you sign it, papa?"

"Nonsense, nonsense, my child! What could I do when my brother-officers
called--the father had been in the army--if I was a teetotaler?"

"But do try, papa."

"Tut, tut! why you are quite a little radical."

"Well, you won't ask me to pass the bottle, papa?"

"You are quite a fanatic, my child; but I promise not to ask you to touch
it."

Some weeks after that two officers called in to spend the evening.

"What have you to drink?" said they.

"Have you any more of that prime Scotch ale?"

"No," said he; "I have not, but I shall get some. Here, Willie, run to the
store, and tell them to send some bottles up."

The boy stood before his father respectfully, but did not go.

"Come, Willie; why, what's the matter? Come, run along." He went, but came
back presently without any bottles.

"Where's the ale, Willie?"

"I asked them for it at the store, and they put it upon the counter, but I
could not touch it. O pa, pa! don't be angry; I told them to send it up,
but I could not touch it myself!"

The father was deeply moved, and turning to his brother-officers, he said:

"Gentlemen, do you hear that? You can do as you please. When the ale comes
you may drink it, but not another drop shall be drank in my house, and not
another drop shall pass my lips. Willie, have you your temperance pledge?"

"O pa! I have."

"Bring it, then."

And the boy was back with it in a moment. The father signed it and the
little fellow clung round his father's neck with delight. The ale came,
but not one drank, and the bottles stood on the table untouched.

Children, sign the pledge, and ask your parents to help you keep it. Don't
touch the bottle, and try to keep others from touching it.




MISCELLANEOUS.


Stock Farms FOR SALE; one of the very best in Central Illinois, the
finest agricultural region in the world; 1,100 acres, highly improved;
unusual facilities for handling stock; also a smaller farm; also one of
the finest

Stock Ranches In Central Texas, 9,136 acres. Each has never-failing water,
and near railroads; must be sold; terms easy; price low. For further
particulars address

J. B. or F. C. TURNER, Jacksonville, Ill.



Cut This Out & Return to us with TEN CTS. & you'll get by mail A
GOLDEN BOX OF GOODS that will bring you in MORE MONEY, in One Month
than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty Need no capital.

M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York



Self Cure Free

Nervous Debility

Lost Manhood

Weakness and Decay

A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired). Druggists can
fill it. Address

DR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO.



MAP Of the United States and Canada, Printed in Colors, size 4 x 2-1/2
feet, also a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER for one year. Sent to any address
for $2.00.



BREEDERS DIRECTORY.

The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders
in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can
feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with:

SWINE.

Chester Whites.

W. A. Gilbert, Wauwatosa, Wis.



LIVE STOCK, Etc.


PUBLIC SALE OF POLLED ABERDEEN-ANGUS AND Short-Horn Cattle.

[Illustration of a cow]

We will, on March 27 and 28, at Dexter Park, Stock Yards, Chicago, offer
at public sale 64 head of Polled Aberdeen-Angus, and 21 head of
Short-horns, mostly Imported and all highly bred cattle, representing the
best strains of their respective breeds. Sale each day will begin at 1 P.
M., sharp. Catalogues now ready. Address as below.

NOTE--ENGLISH SHIRE HORSES,--Three stallions and four mares of this
breed (all imported) will be offered at the close of the second day's sale
of cattle.

Geo. Whitfield, Model Farm, Model Farm,

Geary Bros., Bli Bro. Stock Farm, London, Canada.

At Kansas City, Mo., on April 15, 16, and 17, the same parties will offer
at public sale a choice lot of Aberdeen-Angus and Short-horn cattle.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.



  HOLSTEINS
  AT
  LIVING RATES.

DR. W. A. PRATT, ELGIN, ILL.,

Now has a herd of more than one hundred head of full-blooded

HOLSTEINS

mostly imported direct from Holland. These choice dairy animals are for
sale at moderate prices. Correspondence solicited or, better, call and
examine the cattle, and select your own stock.



SCOTCH COLLIE
SHEPHERD PUPS,
--FROM--
IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK

--ALSO--
Newfoundland Pups and Rat Terrier Pups.

Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs
is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25
cents in postage stamps.

For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose
a 3-cent stamp, and address

N. H. PAAREN,
P. O. Box 326.--CHICAGO, ILL.



VICTORIA SWINE.

[Illustration: FALSTAFF.]

Winner of First Prize Chicago Fat Stock Show 1878. Originators of this
famous breed. Also breeders of Pekin Ducks and Light Brahma Fowls. Stock
for sale. Send for circular A.

SCHIEDT & DAVIS, Dyer, Lake Co. Ind



STEWART'S HEALING POWDER.

[Illustration of two people and a horse]

SOLD BY HARNESS AND DRUG STORES. Warranted to cure all open Sores on
ANIMALS from any cause.



Chester White Pigs.

Good as the best at prices to suit the times. Also, Short-horn cattle. Send
for price list. S. H. OLMSTEAD, Freedom, La Salle Co., Ill. Reduced rates
by express.



2086 Lbs. W'ght Of Two Ohio IMPROVED CHESTER HOGS. Send for description of
this famous breed, Also Fowls,

L. B. SILVER, CLEVELAND, O.



SILVER SPRINGS HERD, JERSEY CATTLE, combining the best butter families.
Correspondence solicited.

T. L. HACKER, Madison, Wis.



PIG EXTRICATOR

To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular to WM. DULIN,
Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia.



CARDS

40 Satin Finish Cards, New Imported designs, name on and Present Free for
10c.

Cut this out. CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct.



40 (1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name, 10c., 13 pks. $1. GEORGE I.
REED & CO., Nassau, N. Y.



THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published.
Only $2.00 per year.




[Illustration: LITERATURE.]


  THE GENTLEMAN FARMER.

  He owned the farm--at least 'twas thought
   He owned, since he lived upon it,--
  And when he came there, with him brought
   The men whom he had hired to run it.

  He had been bred to city life
   And had acquired a little money;
  But, strange conceit, himself and wife
   Thought farming must be something funny.

  He did not work himself at all,
   But spent his time in recreation--
  In pitching quoits and playing ball,
   And such mild forms of dissipation.

  He kept his "rods" and trolling spoons,
   His guns and dogs of various habits,--
  While in the fall he hunted coons,
   And in the winter skunks and rabbits.

  His hired help were quick to learn
   The liberties that might be taken,
  And through the season scarce would earn
   The salt it took to save their bacon.

  He knew no more than child unborn,
   One-half the time, what they were doing,--
  Whether they stuck to hoeing corn,
   Or had on hand some mischief brewing.

  His crops, although they were but few,
   With proper food were seldom nourished,
  While cockle instead of barley grew,
   And noxious weeds and thistles flourished.

  His cows in spring looked more like rails
   Set up on legs, than living cattle;
  And when they switched their dried-up tails
   The very bones in them would rattle.

  At length the sheriff came along,
   Who soon relieved him of his labors.
  While he became the jest and song
   Of his more enterprising neighbors.

  Back to the place where life began,
   Back to the home from whence he wandered,
  A sadder, if not a wiser man,
   He went with all his money squandered.

  MORAL.

  On any soil, be it loam or clay,
   Mellow and light, or rough and stony,
  Those men who best make farming pay
   Find use for brains as well as money.
                   _--Tribune and Farmer._


FRANK DOBB'S WIVES.

"The great trouble with my son," old Dobb observed to me once, "is that he
is a genius."

And the old gentleman sighed and looked with melancholy eyes at the
picture on the genius's easel. It was a clever picture, but everything
Frank Dobb did was clever, from his painting to his banjo playing. Clever
was the true name for it, for of substantial merit it possessed none. He
had begun to paint without learning to draw, and he could pick a tune out
of any musical instrument extant without ever having mastered the
mysteries of notes. He talked the most graceful of airy nothings, and
could not cover a page of note paper without his orthography going lame,
and all the rest of his small acquirements and accomplishments were
proportionately shallow and incomplete. Paternal partiality laid it to his
being too gifted to study, but the cold logic, which no ties of
consanguinity influenced, ascribed it to laziness.

Frank was, indeed, the idlest and best-natured fellow in the world. You
never saw him busy, angry, or out of spirits. He painted a little,
thrummed his guitar a little longer or rattled a tune off on his piano,
smoked and read a great deal, and flirted still more, all in the same
deliberate and easy-going way. Any excuse was sufficient to absolve him
from serious work. So he lead a pleasant, useless life, with Dobb senior
to pay the bills.

He had the handsomest studio in New York, a studio for one of Ouida's
heroes to luxuriate in. If the encouragement of picturesque surroundings
could have made a painter of him he would have been a master. The fame of
his studio, and the fact that he did not need the money, made his pictures
sell. He was quite a lion in society, and it was regarded as a favor to be
asked to call on him. He was the beau ideal of the artist of romance, and
was accorded a romantic eminence accordingly. So, with his pictures to
provide him with pocket money, and his father to see to the rest, he lived
the life of a young prince, feted and flattered and spoiled, artistically
despised by all the serious workers who knew him, and hated by some who
envied him the commercial success he had no necessity for, but esteemed by
most of us as a good fellow and his own worst enemy.

Frank married his first wife while Dobb senior was still at the helm of
his own affairs. She was a charming little woman whose acquaintance he had
made when she visited his studio with a party of friends. She had not a
penny, but he made a draft upon "the governor," as he called him, and the
happy pair digested their honeymoon in Europe. They were absent six
months, during which time he did not set brush to canvas. Then they
returned, as he fancifully termed it, to go to work.

He commenced the old life as if he had never been married. The familiar
sound of pipes and beer, and supper after the play, often with young
ladies who had been assisting in the representation on the stage, was
traveled as if there had been no Mrs. Dobb at home in the flat old Dobb
provided. Frank's expenditures on himself were as lavish as they had been
in his bachelor days. As little Brown said, it was lucky that Mrs. Dobb
had a father-in-law to buy her dinner for her. She rarely came to her
husband's studio, because he claimed that it interfered with the course of
business. He had invented a fiction that she was too weak to endure the
strain of society, and so he took her into it as little as possible. In
brief, married by the caprice of a selfish man, the poor little woman
lived through a couple of neglected years, and then died of a malady as
nearly akin to a broken heart as I can think of, while Frank was making a
trip to the Bahamas on the yacht of his friend Munnybagge, of the Stock
Exchange.

He had set out on the voyage ostensibly to make studies, for he was a
marine painter, on the principle, probably, that marines are easiest to
paint. When he came back and found his wife dead, he announced that he
would move his studio to Havana for the purpose of improving his art. He
did so, putting off his mourning suit the day after he left New York and
not putting it on again, as the evidence of creditable witnesses on the
steamer and in Havana has long since proved.

His son's callousness was a savage stab in old Dobb's heart. A little,
mild-looking old gentleman, without a taint of selfishness or suspicion in
his own nature, he had not seen the effect of his indulgence of him on his
son till his brutal disregard for his first duty as a man had told him of
it. The old man had appreciated and loved his daughter-in-law. In
proportion as he had discovered her unhappiness and its just cause, he had
lost his affection for his son. I hear that there was a terrible scene
when Frank came home, a week after his wife had been buried. He claimed to
have missed the telegram announcing her death to him at Nassau, but
Munnybagge had already told some friends that he had got the dispatch in
time for the steamer, but had remained over till the next one, because he
had a flirtation on hand with little Gonzales, the Cuban heiress, and old
Dobb had heard of it. Munnybagge never took him yachting again; and,
speaking to me once about him, he designated him, not by name, but as
"that infernal bloodless cad."

However, as I have said, there was a desperate row between father and son,
and Frank is said to have slunk out of the house like a whipped cur, and
been quite dull company at the supper which he took after the opera that
night in Gillian Trussell's jolly Bohemian flat. When he emigrated, with
his studio traps filling half a dozen packing cases, none of the boys
bothered to see him off. They had learned to see through his good
fellowship, and recalled a poor little phantom, to whose life and
happiness he had been a wicked and bitter enemy.

About a year after his departure I read the announcement in the Herald of
the marriage of Franklin D. Dobb, Sr., to a widow well-known and popular
in society. I took the trouble to ascertain that it was Frank's father,
and being among some of the boys that night, mentioned it to them.

"Well," remarked Smith, "that's really queer. You remember Frank left some
things in my care when he went away? Yesterday I got a letter asking about
them, and informing me that he had got married and was coming home."

He did come home, and he settled in his old studio. What sort of a meeting
he had with his father this time I never heard. The old gentleman had been
paying him his allowance regularly while he was away, and I believe he
kept up the payment still. But otherwise he gave him no help, and if he
ever needed help he did now.

His wife was a Cuban, as pretty and as helpless as a doll. She had been an
heiress till her brother had turned rebel and had his property
confiscated. Unfortunately for Frank, he had married her before the
culmination of this catastrophe. In fact, he had been paying court to her
with the dispatch announcing his wife's death in his pocket, and had
married her long before the poor little clay was well settled in the grave
he had sent it to. In marrying her he had evidently believed he was
establishing his future. So he was, but it was a future of expiation for
the sins and omissions of his past.

The new Mrs. Dobb was a tigress in her love and her jealousy. She was
childish and ignorant, and adored her husband as a man and an artist. She
measured his value by her estimation of him, and was on the watch
perpetually for trespassers on her domain. The domestic outbreaks between
the two were positively blood curdling. One afternoon, I remember, Gillian
Trussell, who had heard of his return, called on him. Mrs. D. met her at
the studio door, told her, "Frank," as she called him, was out; slammed
the door in her face, and then flew at him with a palette scraper. We had
to break the door in, and found him holding her off by both wrists, and
she frothing in a mad fit of hysterics. From that day he was a changed
man. She owned him body and soul.

The life the pair lived after that was simply ridiculously miserable. He
had lost his old social popularity, and was forced to sell his pictures to
the cheap dealers, when he was lucky enough to sell them at all. The
paternal allowance would not support the flat they first occupied, and
they went into a boarding house. Inside of a month they were in the
papers, on account of outbreaks on Mrs. Dobb's part against one of the
ladies of the house. A couple of days after he leased a little room
opening into his studio, converted it into a bed-room, and they settled
there for good.

Such a housekeeping as it was--like a scene in a farce. The studio had
long since run to seed, and a perpetual odor of something to eat hung over
it along with the sickening reek of the Florida water Mrs. D., like all
other creoles, made more liberal use of than of the pure element it was
half-named from. Crumbs and crusts and chop-bones, which the dog had left,
littered the rugs; and I can not recall the occasion on which the
caterer's tin box was not standing at the door, unless it was when the
dirty plates were piled up, there waiting for him to come for them. I
dined there once. Frank had had a savage quarrel with her that day, and
wanted me for a bender. But the scheme availed him nothing, for she broke
out over the soup and I left them to fight it out, and finished my feast
at a chop house.

All of his old flirtations came back to curse him now. His light loves of
the playhouse and his innocent devotions of the ball room were alike the
instruments fate had forged into those of punishment for him. The very
names of his old fancies, which, with that subtle instinct all women
possess, she had found out, were sufficient to send his wife into a
frenzy. She was a chronic theatre-goer, and they never went to the theatre
without bringing a quarrel home with them. If he was silent at the play
she charged him with neglecting her; if he brisked up and tried to chat,
her jealousy would soon pick out some casus belli in the small talk he
strove to interest her with. A word to a passing friend, a glance at one
of her own sex, was sufficient to set her going. I shall never question
that jealousy is a form of actual madness, after what I saw of it in the
lives of that miserable man and woman.

A year after his return he was the ghost of his old self. He was haggard
and often unshaven; his attire was shabby and carelessly put on; he had
lost his old, jaunty air, and went by you with a hurried pace, and his
head and shoulders bent with an indescribable suggestion of humility. The
fear of having her break out, regardless of any one who might be by, which
hung over him at home, haunted him out of doors, too. The avenger of Mrs.
Dobb the first had broken his spirit as effectually as he had broken Mrs.
Dobb's heart. Smith occupied the next studio to him, and one evening I was
smoking there, when an atrocious uproar commenced in the next room. We
could distinguish Frank's voice and his wife's, and another strange one.
Smith looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. The disturbance
ceased in a couple of minutes, and a door banged.

Then came a crash, a shrill and furious scream, and the sound of feet. We
ran to the door, in time to see Mrs. Dobb, her hair in a tangle down her
back, in a dirty wrapper and slipshod slippers, stumbling down stairs. We
posted after her, Smith nearly breaking his neck by tripping over one of
the slippers which she had shed as she ran. The theatres were just out and
the streets full of people, among whom she jostled her way like the mad
woman that she was. We came up with her as she overtook her husband, who
was walking with McGilp, the dealer who handled his pictures. She seized
him by the arm and screamed out:

"I told you I would come with you."

His face for a moment was the face of a devil, full of fury and despair. I
saw his fist clench itself and the big vein in his forehead swell. But he
slipped his hands into his pockets, looked appealingly at McGilp, and
said, shrugging his shoulders, "You see how it is, Mac?"

McGilp nodded and walked abruptly away, with a look full of contempt and
scorn. We mingled with the crowd and saw the poor wretches go off
together, he grim and silent, she hysterically excited--with all the world
staring at them. Smith slept on a lounge in my room that night. "I
couldn't get a wink up there," he said, "and I don't want to be even the
ear witness of a murder."

The night did not witness the tragedy he anticipated, though. Next day,
Frank Dobb came to see me--a compliment he had not paid me for months. He
was the incarnation of abject misery, and so nervous that he could
scarcely speak intelligibly.

"I saw you in the crowd last night, old man," he said, looking at the
floor and twisting and untwisting his fingers. "What do you think of it? A
nice life for a fellow to lead, eh?"

What else could I reply than, "Why do you lead it then?"

"Why?" he repeated, breaking into a hollow, uneasy laugh. "Why, because I
love her, damn me! and I deserve it all."

"Is this what you came to tell me?" I asked.

"No," he answered, "of course not. The fact is, I want you to help me out
of a hole. That row last night has settled me with McGilp. He came to see
me about a lot of pictures for a sale he is getting up out West, and the
senora kept up such a nagging that he got sick and suggested that we
should go to 'The Studio' for a chop and settle the business there. She
swore I shouldn't go, and that she would follow us if I did. I thought
she'd not go that far; but she did. So the McGilp affair is off for good,
I know. He's disgusted, and I don't blame him. What I want of you is this.
Buy that Hoguet you wanted last year."

The picture was one I had fancied and offered him a price for in his palmy
days, one that he had picked up abroad. I was only too glad to take it and
a couple more, for which I paid him at once; and next evening, at dinner,
I heard that he had levanted. "Walked out this morning," said Smith, "and
sent a messenger an hour after with word that he had already left the
city. She came in to me with the letter in one hand and a dagger in the
other. She swears he has run away with another woman, and says she's going
to have her life, if she has to follow her around the world."

She did not carry out her sanguinary purpose, though. There were some
consultations with old Dobb and then the studio was to let again. Some one
told me she had returned to Cuba, where she proposed to live on the
allowance her father-in-law had made her husband and which he now
continued to her.

I had almost forgotten her when, several years later, in the lobby of the
Academy of Music, she touched my arm with her fan. She was promenading on
the arm of a handsome but beefy-looking Englishman, whom she introduced to
me as her husband. I had not heard of a divorce, but I took the
introduction as information that there had been one. The Englishman was a
better fellow than he looked. We supped together after the opera, and I
learned that he had met Mrs. Dobb in Havana, where he had spent some years
in business. I found her a changed woman--a new woman, indeed, in whom I
only now and then caught a glimpse of her old indolent, babyish and
foolish self. She was not only prettier than ever, but she had become a
sensible and clever woman. The influence of an intelligent man, who was
strong enough to bend her to his ways, had developed her latent brightness
and taught her to respect herself as well as him.

I met her several times after that, and at the last meeting but one she
spoke of Frank for the first time. Her black eyes snapped when she uttered
his name. The devil was alive in them, though love was dead.

I told her that I had heard nothing of him since his disappearance.

"But I have," she said, showing her white teeth in a curious smile.

"Indeed!" I replied, quite astounded.

"The coward!" she went on bitterly; "and to think I could ever have loved
such a thing as he! Do you know, Mr. X., that I never knew he had been
married till after he had fled? Then his father told me how he had courted
my father's money, with his wife lying dead at home. Oh! Senor Francisco,
Senor Francisco! Before I heard that, I wanted to kill the woman who had
stolen you from me. The moment after I could have struck you dead at my
feet."

She threw her arm up, holding her fan like a dagger. I believed her, and
so would any one who had seen her then.

"I had hardly settled in Havana," she continued, "before I received a
letter from him. Already he wanted to come back to me. Had the other woman
tired of him already? I asked myself, or was it really true, as his father
had told me, that he had fled alone? I answered the letter, and he wrote
again. Again I answered, and so it was kept up. For two years I played
with the love I now knew was worthless. He was traveling round the world,
and a dozen times wanted to come directly to me. I insisted that he should
keep his journey up--as a probation, you see. He submitted. But oh! how he
did love me!"

The exultation with which she told this was absolutely fiendish. I could
see in it, plainer than any words could tell it to me, the scheme of
vengeance she had carried out, the alternating hopes and torments to which
she had raised, and into which she had plunged him. I could see him
wandering around the globe, scourged by remorses, agonized by doubts, and
maddened by despairs, accepting the lies she wrote him as inviolable
pledges, and sustaining himself with the vision of a future never to be
fulfilled. She read the expression of my face, and laughed.

"Was it not an idea?" she asked. "Was that not better than this?"

And again she stabbed the air with her fan.

"But--pardon me the question--but you have begun the confidence," I said.
"How will it end?"

"It has ended," she answered.

"How?"

"I had been divorced while I was writing to him. A year ago he was to be
in London, where I was to meet him. While he was sailing from the Cape of
Good Hope I was being married to a man who loved me for myself, and to
whom I had confided all. Instead of my address at the London post office
he received a notification of my marriage, addressed to him in my own hand
and mailed to him by myself. He wrote once or twice still, but my husband
indorsed the letters with his own name and returned them unopened. He may
be dead for all I know, but I hope and pray he is still alive, and will
remain alive and love me for a thousand years."

She opened her arms, as if to hug her vengeance to her heart, and looked
at me steadily with eyes that thrilled me with their lambent fire. No
wonder the wretched vagabond loved her! What a doom his selfishness and
his duplicity had invoked upon him! I believe if he could have seen her as
I saw her then, so different from and better than he knew her to be, he
would have gone mad on the spot. Poor Mrs. Dobb the first was indeed
avenged.

We sipped our chocolate and talked of other things, as if such a being as
Frank Dobb had never been. Her husband joined us and we made an evening of
it at the theatre. I knew from the way he looked at me, and from the
increased warmth of his manner, that he was conversant with his wife's
having made a confidant of me. But I do not think he knew how far her
confidence had gone. I have often wondered since if he knew how deep and
fierce the hatred she carried for his predecessor was. There are things
women will reveal to strangers which they will die rather than divulge to
those they love.

I saw them off to Europe, for they were going to establish themselves in
London, and I have never seen or directly heard from them since. But some
months after their departure I received a letter from Robinson, who has
been painting there ever since his picture made that great hit in the
Salon of '7--.

"I have odd news for you," he wrote. "You remember Frank Dobb, who
belonged to our old Pen and Pencil Club, and who ran away from that Cuban
wife of his just before I left home? Well, about a year ago I met him in
Fleet street, the shabbiest beggar you ever saw. He was quite tight and
smelled of gin across the street. He was taking a couple of drawings to a
penny dreadful office which he was making pictures for at ten shillings a
piece. I went to see him once, in the dismalest street back of Drury Lane.
He was doing some painting for a dealer, when he was sober enough, and of
all the holes you ever saw his was it. I soon had to sit down on him, for
he got into the habit of coming to see me and loafing around, making the
studio smell like a pub, till I would lend him five shillings to go away.
I heard nothing of him till the other day I came across an event which
this from the Telegraph will explain."

The following newspaper paragraph was appended:

"The man who shot himself on the door-step of Mr. Bennerley Green, the
West India merchant, last Monday, has been discovered to be an American
who for some time has been employed furnishing illustrations to the lower
order of publications here. He was known as Allan, but this is said to
have been an assumed name. He is stated to be the son of a wealthy New
Yorker, who discarded him in consequence of his habits of dissipation, and
to have once been an artist of considerable prominence in the United
States. All that is known of the suicide is the story told by the servant,
who a few minutes after admitting his master and mistress upon their
return from the theatre, heard the report of a pistol in the street, and
on opening the door found the wretched man dead upon the step. The body
was buried after the inquest at the charge of the eminent American artist,
Mr. J. J. Robinson, A. R. A., who had known him in his better days."

The second husband of Mrs. Frank Dobb is Mr. Bennerley Green, the West
India merchant.--_The Continent._

       *     *     *     *     *

CONSUMPTION CURED.

An old physician, retired from practice, having had placed in his hands by
an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the
speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and
all throat and Lung Affections, also a positive and radical cure for
Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its
wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to
make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a
desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who
desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full
directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp,
naming this paper. W. A. NOYES, _149 Power's Block_, _Rochester_, _N. Y._




[Illustration: HUMOROUS]

Many cures for snoring have been invented, but none have stood the test so
well as the old reliable clothes-pin.


A Clergyman says that the baby that pulls whiskers, bites fingers, and
grabs for everything it sees has in it the elements of a successful
politician.


A Hartford man has a Bible bearing date 1599. It is very easy to preserve
a Bible for a great many years, because--because--well, we don't know what
the reason is, but it is so, nevertheless.


A Vermont man has a hen thirty years old. The other day a hawk stole it,
but after an hour came back with a broken bill and three claws gone, put
down the hen and took an old rubber boot in place of it.


Alexander Gumbleton Ruffleton Scufflton Oborda Whittleton Sothenhall
Benjaman Franklin Squires is still a resident of North Carolina, aged
ninety-two. The census taker always thinks at first that the old man is
guying.


A little five-year-old friend, who was always allowed to choose the
prettiest kitten for his pet and playmate before the other nurslings were
drowned, was taken to his mother's sick room the other morning to see the
two tiny new twin babes. He looked reflectively from one to the other for
a minute or two, then, poking his chubby finger into the plumpest baby, he
said decidedly, "Save this one."


In promulgating your esoteric cogitation on articulating superficial
sentimentalities and philosophical psychological observation, beware of
platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversation possess a clarified
conciseness, compact comprehensiveness, coalescent consistency, and a
concatenated cognancy; eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity
and jejune babblement. In other words, don't use such big words.


  HOW HE WAS "SLEIGHED."

  A boy once took it in his head
  That he would exercise his sled.

  He took the sled into the road
  And, lord a massy! how he slode.

  And as he slid, he laughing cried,
  "What fun upon my sled to slide."

  And as he laughed, before he knewed,
  He from that sliding sled was slude.

  Upon the slab where he was laid
  They carved this line: "This boy was sleighed."


"A Farmer's Wife" wants to know if we can recommend anything to destroy
the "common grub." We guess the next tramp that comes along could oblige
you.




MISCELLANEOUS


THE UNION BROAD-CAST SEEDER.

[Illustration of a seeder]

The only 11-Foot Seeder In the Market Upon Which the Operator can Ride,
See His Work, and Control the Machine.

NO GEAR WHEELS, FEED PLACED DIRECTLY ON THE AXLE, A POSITIVE FORCE FEED,

Also FORCE FEED GRASS SEED ATTACHMENT. We also manufacture the Seeder with
Cultivators of different widths. For Circulars and Prices address the
Manufacturers,

HART, HITCHCOCK, & CO., Peoria, Ill.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.



[Illustration of coulter parts]

Don't be Humbugged With Poor, Cheap Coulters.

All farmers have had trouble with their Coulters. In a few days they get
to wobbling, are condemned and thrown aside. In our

"BOSS" Coulter

we furnish a tool which can scarcely be worn out; and when worn, the
wearable parts, a prepared wood journal, and movable thimble in the hub
(held in place by a key) can be easily and cheaply renewed. We guarantee
our "BOSS" to plow more acres than any other three Coulters now used.

OUR "O.K." CLAMP

Attaches the Coulter to any size or kind of beam, either right or left
hand plow. We know that after using it you will say it is the Best Tool on
the Market. Ask your dealer for it.

Manufactured by the BOSS COULTER CO., Bunker Hill, Ill.



"THE GOLDEN BELT"

ALONG THE KANSAS DIVISION U. P. R'WAY.

KANSAS LANDS

STOCK RAISING

Buffalo Grass Pasture Summer and Winter.

WOOL-GROWING

Unsurpassed for Climate, Grasses, Water.

CORN and WHEAT

200,000,000 Bus. Corn.   30,000,000 Wheat.

FRUIT

The best In the Eastern Market.

Pamphlets and Maps free. B. McALLASTER, Land Commis'r, Kansas City, Mo.



[Illustration of a typewriter]

THE STANDARD REMINGTON TYPE-WRITER is acknowledged to be the only rapid
and reliable writing machine. It has no rival. These machines are used for
transcribing and general correspondence in every part of the globe, doing
their work in almost every language. Any young man or woman of ordinary
ability, having a practical knowledge of the use of this machine may find
constant and remunerative employment. All machines and supplies, furnished
by us, warranted. Satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. Send for
circulars WYCKOFF, SEAMANS & BENEDICT. 38 East Madison St. Chicago, Ill.



GRATEFUL--COMFORTING.

EPPS'S COCOA.

BREAKFAST.

"By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operations
of digestion and nutrition, and by a careful application of the fine
properties of well-selected Cocoa, Mr. Epps has provided our breakfast
tables with a delicately flavored beverage which may save us many heavy
doctors' bills. It is by the judicious use of such articles of diet that a
constitution may be gradually built up until strong enough to resist every
tendency to disease. Hundreds of subtle maladies are floating around us
ready to attack wherever there is a weak point. We may escape many a fatal
shaft by keeping ourselves well fortified with pure blood and a properly
nourished frame."--_Civil Service Gazette_.

Made simply with boiling water or milk. Sold only in half-pound tins by
Grocers, labeled thus:

JAMES EPPS & CO., Homoeopathic Chemists, London, England.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.



Nebraska Seed Corn.

I have about 1,000 bushels of very choice selected yellow corn, which I
have tested and know all will grow, which I will put into good sacks and
ship by freight in not less than 5-bushel lots at $1 per bushel of 70
lbs., ears. It is very large yield and early maturing corn. This seed is
well adapted to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and the whole
Northwest. Send money by P.O. order, registered letter, or draft. Address:

C. H. LEE, Silver Creek, Merrick Co., Neb.

NOTE--Mr. C. H. Lee is my brother-in-law, and I guarantee him in every way
reliable and responsible. M. J. LAWRENCE, Ed. Ohio Farmer.



[Illustration of a pocket watch]

We will send you a watch or a chain BY MAIL OR EXPRESS, C. O. D., to be
examined, before paying any money and if not satisfactory, returned at our
expense. We manufacture all our watches and save you 30 per cent.
Catalogue of 250 styles free.

EVERY WATCH WARRANTED. ADDRESS:

STANDARD AMERICAN WATCH CO., PITTSBURGH PA.



[Illustration of an anvil-vise tool]

Anvil, Vise, Out off Tool for Farm and Home use. 3 sizes, $4.50, $5.50,
$6.50. Sold by hardware dealers. To introduce, one free to first person
who gets up club of four. Agents wanted. Write for circulars.

CHENEY ANVIL & VISE CO., DETROIT, MICH.



AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE to solicit Subscriptions for this paper. Write
Prairie Farmer Publishing Co., Chicago, for particulars.



TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH

Use the Magneton Appliance Co.'s

MAGNETIC LUNG PROTECTOR!

PRICE ONLY $5.

They are priceless to LADIES, GENTLEMEN, and CHILDREN WITH WEAK LUNGS;
no case of PNEUMONIA OR CROUP is ever known where these garments are worn.
They also prevent and cure HEART DIFFICULTIES, COLDS, RHEUMATISM,
NEURALGIA, THROAT TROUBLES, DIPHTHERIA, CATARRH, AND ALL KINDRED
DISEASES. Will WEAR any service for THREE YEARS. Are worn
over the under-clothing.

CATARRH

It is needless to describe the symptoms of this nauseous disease that is
sapping the life and strength of only too many of the fairest and best of
both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern
lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for
Catarrh, a remedy which contains NO DRUGGING OF THE SYSTEM, and with the
continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs,
MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this
Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for
remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE the
patronage of the MANY PERSONS who have tried DRUGGING THEIR STOMACHS
WITHOUT EFFECT.

HOW TO OBTAIN This Appliance. Go to your druggist and ask for them. If
they have not got them, write to the proprietors, enclosing the price, in
letter at our risk, and they will be sent to you at once by mail,
post-paid.

Send stamp for the "New Departure in Medical Treatment WITHOUT MEDICINE,"
with thousands of testimonials,

THE MAGNETON APPLIANCE CO., 218 State Street, Chicago, Ill.

NOTE.--Send one dollar in postage stamps or currency (in letter at our
risk) with size of shoe usually worn, and try a pair of our Magnetic
Insoles, and be convinced of the power residing in our Magnetic
Appliances. Positively _no cold feet where they are worn, or money
refunded_.



[Illustration of person holding a card]

Print Your Own Cards Labels, Envelopes, etc. with our #3 Printing Press.
Larger sizes for circulars, et., $8 to $75. For pleasure, money-making,
young or old. Everything easy, printed instructions. Send 2 stamps for
Catalogue of Presses Type, Cards, etc., to the factory.

KELSEY & CO., Meriden, Conn.




GENERAL NEWS.


St. Louis is to have a dog show about the middle of April.


South Chicago had a $75,000 fire on the night of the 17th.


New York is to have a new water supply to cost $30,000,000.


There are about 50,000 Northern tourists in Florida at this time.


Another conspiracy against the Government is brewing in Spain.


A sister of John Brown, of Osawatomie is a resident of Des Moines.


Dakota will spend nearly a million and a half for school purposes this
year.


King's Opera House and several adjacent buildings at Knoxville, Tenn.,
were burned Monday night.


A child in Philadelphia has just been attacked by hydrophobia from the
bite of a dog three years ago.


Captain Traynor, who once crossed the Atlantic in a dory, now proposes to
make the trip in a rowboat.


During the present century 150,000,000 copies of the Bible have been
printed in 226 different languages.


The Governor General at Trieste was surprised Tuesday by the explosion of
a bomb in front of his residence.


The man who fired the first gun in the battle of Gettysburg lives in
Malvern, Iowa. His name is Dick Gidley.


St. Patrick's Day was appropriately (as the custom goes) celebrated in
Chicago, and the other large cities of the country.


Kansas has 420 newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, semi-weeklies,
monthlies, semi-monthlies, tri-monthlies, and quarterlies.


A Dubuque watchmaker has invented a watch movement which has no
dial-wheels, and is said will create a revolution in watch-making.


In the trial of Orrin A. Carpenter for the murder of Zura Burns, now in
progress at Petersburg, Illinois, the prosecution has rested its case.


All the members of the United States Senate signed a telegram to Simon
Cameron, now in Florida, congratulating him on his eighty-fifth birthday.


The inventor of a system of electric lighting announces that he is about
to use the water-power at Niagara to furnish light to sixty-five cities.


The British leaders in Egypt have offered a reward of $5,000 for the
capture of Osman Digma, the rebel leader, whom Gen. Graham has now
defeated in two battles.


The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe road is at war with the Western Union
Telegraph Company in Texas, and sends ten-word messages through that State
for fifteen cents.


Thirty-four counties and twenty-one railroads between Pittsburg and Cairo
report fifty-five bridges destroyed by the February flood. The estimated
cost of replacing them is $210,000.


There is a movement on foot in Chicago which may result in the holding of
both the National Conventions in Battery D Hall, which is said to have
better acoustic properties than the Exposition Building.


It is reported that more than six thousand Indians are starving at Fort
Peck Agency. Game has entirely disappeared, and those Indians who have
been turning their attention to farming, raised scarcely anything last
year.


The announcement is made at St. Louis that the Pacific Express Company
lost $160,000 by Prentiss Tiller and his accomplices, and that $25,000 of
the amount is still missing. Tiller, the thief, and a supposed accomplice,
are under arrest.


The British House of Commons was in session all last Saturday night,
considering war measures. It is rumored that Parliament will be dissolved,
and a new election held to ascertain if the Ministry measures are pleasing
to the majority of the people.


The crevasse at Carrollton, Louisiana, has been closed. A break occurred
Monday morning in the Mulatto levee, near Baton Rouge, and at last advices
was forty feet wide and six feet deep, threatening all the plantations
down to Plaquemine.


The Egyptian rebels, as they are called, fight with great bravery. So far,
however, they have been unable to cope with their better armed and
disciplined enemy, but it is reported that they are not at all
discouraged, but swear they will yet drink the blood of the Turks and
their allies from England.




[Illustration: MARKETS]


FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL.



  OFFICE OF THE PRAIRIE FARMER,}
  CHICAGO. March 18, 1884.     }

There was a better feeling in banking circles on Monday but transactions
were not heavy. Interest rates remain at 5@7 per cent.

Eastern exchange sold between banks at 25c per $1,000 premium.

Foreign exchange unchanged.

The failures in the United States during the past seven days are reported
to have numbered 174, and in Canada and the Provinces 42, a total of 216,
as compared with 272 for the previous week, a decrease of 56. The decrease
is principally in the Western, Middle, and New England States. Canada had
the same number of failures as for the preceding week.


GRAIN AND PROVISIONS.

The week opened with the bears on top and prices were forced downward.
Speculation was heavy. Ocean freights are low, yet but little grain
comparatively is going out. London and Liverpool advices were not
encouraging and the New York markets were easy. Corn was unusually dull.

WHEAT.--Red winter, in store No. 2, 98c; spring No. 2 92@93c; No. 3.
85@89c on track.

CORN.--Moderately active. Car lots No 2, 53@53-1/2c; rejected, 46c; new
mixed, 52-1/2c.

OATS.--No. 2 on track closed 34-1/4@35c.

RYE.--No. 2 59@62c.

BARLEY.--No. 2, 66c; No. 3, f.o.b. 6l@62c; No. 5 50c.

FLAX.--Closed at $1 60@1 61 on track.

TIMOTHY.--$1 28@l 34 per bushel. Little doing.

CLOVER.--Quiet at $5 50@5 70 for prime.

HUNGARIAN.--Prime 60@67-1/2c.

BUCKWHEAT.--70@75c.

MILLET.--45@50c.

PROVISIONS.--Mess pork. May $18 10@18 25. Green hams, 11-3/4c per lb.
Short ribs, $9 55@9 60 per cwt.

LARD.--$9 60@9 75.


COUNTRY PRODUCE.

NOTE.--The quotations for the articles named in the following list are
generally for commission lots of goods and from first hands. While our
prices are based as near as may be on the landing or wholesale rates,
allowance must be made for selections and the sorting up for store
distribution.

BRAN.--Quoted at $15 50@15 75 per ton on track.

BEANS.--Hand picked mediums $2 10@2 15. Hand picked navies, $2 15@2 25.

BUTTER.--Choice to extra creamery, 33@35c per lb.; fair to good do 25@30c;
fair to choice dairy 24@28c; common to choice packing stock fresh and
sweet, 9@10c; ladle packed 10@13c.

BROOM-CORN.--Good to choice hurl 7@8c per lb; green self-working 6@6-1/2c;
red-tipped and pale do 4@5c; inside and covers 3@4c; common short corn
2-1/2@3-1/2c; crooked, and damaged, 2@4c, according to quality.

CHEESE.--Choice full-cream cheddars 14@l5c per lb; medium quality do
10@12c; good to prime full-cream flats 15@15-1/2c; skimmed cheddars 9@10c;
good skimmed flats 7@9c; hard-skimmed and common stock 5@7c.

EGGS.--The best brands are quotable at 20@21c per dozen, fresh.

FEATHERS.--Quotations: Prime live geese feathers 52@54c per lb.; ducks
25@35c; duck and geese mixed 35@45c; dry picked chicken feathers body
6@6-1/2c; turkey body feathers 4@4-1/2c; do tail 55@60c; do wing 25@35c;
do wing and tail mixed 35@40c.

HAY.--No 1 timothy $10@10 75 per ton; No 2 do $850@9 50; mixed do $7@8;
upland prairie $7@8 50; No 1 prairie $6@7; No 2 do $4 50@5 50. Small bales
sell at 25@50c per ton more than large bales.

HIDES AND PELTS.--Green-cured light hides 8-1/2c per lb; do heavy cows 8c;
No 2 damaged green-salted hides 6-1/2c; green-salted calf 12@12-1/2 cents;
green-salted bull 6 c; dry-salted hides 11 cents; No. 2 two-thirds price;
No. 1 dry flint 14@14-1/2c, Sheep pelts salable at 25@28c for the
estimated amount of wash wool on each pelt. All branded and scratched
hides are discounted 15 per cent from the price of No. 1.

HOPS.--Prime to choice New York State hops 27@28c per lb; Pacific coast of
23@25c; fair to good Wisconsin 15@20c.

HONEY AND BEESWAX.--Good to choice white comb honey in small boxes 15@17c
per lb; common and dark-colored, or when in large packages 12@14c; beeswax
ranged at 25@30c per lb, according to quality, the outside for prime
yellow.

POULTRY.--Prices for good to choice dry picked and unfrozen lots are:
Turkeys 16@l7c per lb; chickens 12@13c; ducks 14@15c; geese 10@11c. Thin,
undesirable, and frozen stock 2@3c per lb less than these figures; live
offerings nominal.

POTATOES.--Good to choice 38@42c per bu. on track; common to fair 30@36c.
Illinois sweet potatoes range at $4@5 per bbl for yellow.

TALLOW AND GREASE.--No 1 country tallow 7@7-1/4c per lb; No 2 do
6-1/4@6-1/2c. Prime white grease 6@6-1/2c; yellow 5-1/4@5-3/4; brown
4-1/2@5.

VEGETABLES.--Cabbage, $10@15 per 100; celery, 35@45c per per doz bunches;
onions, $1 50@1 75 per bbl for yellow, and $1 for red; turnips, $1 35@1 50
per bbl for rutabagas, and $1 00 for white flat. Pie plant, 10c per lb.
Spinach, $1@2 per bbl. Cucumbers, $1 50@2 00 per doz; radishes, 40c per
doz; lettuce, 40c per doz.

WOOL.--From store range as follows for bright wools from Wisconsin,
Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Eastern Iowa--dark Western lots generally
ranging at 1@2c per lb. less.

  Coarse and dingy tub                    25@30
  Good medium tub                         31@34
  Unwashed bucks' fleeces                 14@15
  Fine unwashed heavy fleeces             18@22
  Fine light unwashed heavy fleeces       22@23
  Coarse unwashed fleeces                 21@22
  Low medium unwashed fleeces             24@25
  Fine medium unwashed fleeces            26@27
  Fine washed fleeces                     32@33
  Coarse washed fleeces                   26@28
  Low medium washed fleeces               30@32
  Fine medium washed fleeces              34@35
  Colorado and Territory wools range as follows:
  Lowest grades                           14@16
  Low medium                              18@22
  Medium                                  22@26
  Fine                                    16@24
  Wools from New Mexico:
  Lowest grades                           14@16
  Part improved                           16@17
  Best improved                           19@23
  Burry from 2c to 10c off; black 2c to 5c off.


LIVE STOCK MARKETS.

The total receipts and shipments for last week were as follows:

                          Received.  Shipped.

  Cattle                    30,963    15,498
  Calves                       375        82
  Hogs                      62,988    34,361
  Sheep                     18,787    10,416

CATTLE.--Diseased cattle of all kinds, especially those having lump-jaws,
cancers, and running sore, are condemned and killed by the health
officers. Shippers will save freight by keeping such stock in the country.

Receipts were fair on Sunday and Monday and the demand not being very
brisk prices dropped a little. The supply of choice beeves was light. We
quote

  Choice to prime steers                  $6 00@  6 85
  Good to choice steers                    6 20@  6 50
  Fair to good shipping steers             5 55@  6 15
  Common to medium dressed beef steers     4 85@  5 50
  Very common steers                       5 00@  5 50
  Cows, choice to prime                    5 00@  5 50
  Cows, common to choice                   3 30@  4 95
  Cows, inferior                           2 50@  3 25
  Common to prime bulls                    3 25@  5 50
  Stockers, common to choice               3 70@  4 75
  Feeders, fair to choice                  4 80@  5 25
  Milch cows, per head                    25 00@ 65 00
  Veal calves, per 100lbs                  4 00@  7 75

HOGS.--All sales of hogs in this market are made subject to a shrinkage of
40 lbs for piggy sows and 80 lbs for each stag. Dead hogs sell at 1-1/2c
per lb for weight of 200 lbs and over, and 1c for weights of less than 200
lbs. With the exception of cripples and milch cows, all stock is sold per
100 lbs live weight.

There were about 3,000 head more on Sunday and Monday than for same days
last week, the receipts reaching 11,000 head. All but the poorest lots
were readily taken at steady prices. Common to choice light bacon hogs
were sold from $5 80 to $6 70, their weights averaging 150@206 lbs. Rough
packing lots sold at $6 20@6 75. and heavy packing and shipping hogs
averaging 240@309 lbs brought $6 80@7 40. Skips were sold at $4 75@$5 75.

SHEEP.--This class of stock seems to be on the increase at the yards.
Sunday and Monday brought hither 5,500 head, an increase of 2,500 over
receipts a week ago. Prices weakened a little. Sales ranged at $3 37-1/2@5
65 for common to choice, the great bulk of the offerings consisting of
Nebraska sheep.


MARKETS BY TELEGRAPH.

NEW YORK, March 17.--Cattle--Steers sold at $6@7 25 per cwt, live weight;
fat bulls $4 60@5 70; exporters used 60 car-loads, and paid $6 70@7 25 per
cwt, live weight, for good to choice selections; shipments for the week,
672 head live cattle; 7,300 qrs beef; 1,000 carcasses mutton. Sheep and
lambs--Receipts 7,700 head; making 24,300 head for the week; strictly
prime sheep and choice lambs sold at about the former prices, but the
market was uncommonly dull for common and even fair stock, and a clearance
was not made; sales included ordinary to prime sheep at $5@6 37-1/2 per
cwt, but a few picked sheep reached $6 75; ordinary to choice yearlings
$6@8; spring lambs $3@8 per head. Hogs--Receipts 7,900 head, making 20,100
for the week; live dull and nearly nominal; 2 car-loads sold at $6 50@6 75
per 100 pounds.

ST. LOUIS, March 17.--Cattle--Receipts 3,400 head; shipments 1,600 head;
wet weather and liberal receipts caused weak and irregular prices, and
some sales made lower; export steers $6 40@6 90; good to choice $5 75@6
30; common to medium $4 85@5 60; stockers and feeders $4@5 25; corn-fed
Texans $5@5 75. Sheep--Receipts 900 head; shipments 800 head; steady;
common to medium $3@4 25; good to choice $4 50@5 50; extra $5 75@6; Texans
$3@5.

KANSAS CITY, March 17--Cattle--Receipts 1,500 head; weak and slow; prices
unsettled; native steers, 1,092 to 1,503 lbs, $5 05@5 85; stockers and
feeders $4 60@5; cows $3 70@4 50. Hogs--Receipts 5,500 head; good steady;
mixed lower; lots 200 to 500 lbs, $6 25 to 7; mainly $6 40@6 60.
Sheep--Receipts 3,200 head; steady; natives, 81 lbs, $4 35.

EAST LIBERTY, March 17.--Cattle--Dull and unchanged; receipts 1,938 head;
shipments 1,463 head. Hogs--Firm; receipts 7,130 head; shipments 4,485
head; Philadelphias $7 50@7 75; Yorkers $6 50@6 90. Sheep--Dull and
unchanged; receipts 6,600 head; shipments 600 head.

CINCINNATI, O., March 17.--Hogs--Steady; common and light, $5@6 75;
packing and butchers', $6 25@7 25; receipts, 1,800 head; shipments, 920
head.




MISCELLANEOUS.


[Illustration of a steamer]

SPERRY'S AGRICULTURAL STEAMER.

The Safest and Best Steam Generator for cooking feed for stock, heating
water, etc.; will heat a barrel of cold water to boiling in 30 minutes.

D. R. SPERRY & CO, Mfgs. of the Profit Farm Boiler. Caldrons, etc.,
Batavia, Ill.



F. RETTIG, De Kalb, Ill., breeder of Light Brahmas, Plymouth Rocks, Black
and Partridge Cochin fowls, White and Brown Leghorns, W. C. Bl. Polish
fowls and Pekin Ducks. Send for illustrated catalogue.




MUSICAL.


KNABE PIANOFORTES. UNEQUALLED IN Tone, Touch, Workmanship and Durability.

WILLIAM KNABE & CO. Nos. 204 and 206 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore. No.
112 Fifth Avenue, N. Y.



MISCELLANEOUS.


FARMERS

Read what a wheat-grower says of his experience with the

Saskatchawan

FIFE WHEAT

It is the best wheat I ever raised or saw. I sowed one quart and got from
it three bushels of beautiful wheat weighing 63 pounds to the bushel,
which took the first premium at our county fair. I have been offered $15 a
bushel for my seed, but would not part with a handful of it. If I could
not get more like it, I would not sell the three bushels I raised from the
quart for $100. WM. STEABNER, Sorlien's Mill, Yellow Medicine Co., Minn.

Farmers, if you want to know more of this wheat, write to

W. J. ABERNETHY & CO, Minneapolis, Minn.,

for their 16-page circular describing it.

When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.



THE SUGAR HAND BOOK

A NEW AND VALUABLE TREATISE ON SUGAR CANES, (including the Minnesota Early
Amber) and their manufacture into Syrup and Sugar. Although comprised in
small compass and _furnished free to applicants_, it is the BEST PRACTICAL
MANUAL ON SUGAR CANES that has yet been published.

BLYMER MANUFACTURING CO, Cincinnati O.

_Manufacturers of Steam Sugar Machinery, Steam Engines, Victor Cane Mill,
Cook Sugar Evaporator, etc._



FARMS.

MINNESOTA. DAKOTA.

LESS THAN RAILROAD PRICES, on LONG TIME. Send for lists and prices.

GRAVES & VINTON, ST. PAUL, MINN.



BY MAIL

POST-PAID: Choice 1 year APPLE, $5 per 100; 500, $20 ROOT-GRAFTS, 100,
$1.25; 1,000, $7. STRAWBERRIES, doz., 25c.; 100, $1. BLACKBERRIES,
RASPBERRIES, RED AND BLACK, 50c. dozen; 100, $3. Two year CONCORD and
other choice GRAPES, doz $1.65. EARLY TELEPHONE, our best early potato, 4
lbs. $1. This and other choice sorts by express or freight customer paying
charges, pk. 50c., bu. $1.25. Price list free.

F. K. PHOENIX & SON, Delavan, Wis.



Lang's Pig Forceps.

[Illustration of forceps]

To aid animals in giving Birth. $1.20 post-paid. Agents Wanted. For
particulars address

G. J. LANG. Malcom, Iowa.



GOSSAMER GARMENTS FREE.

To any reader of this paper who will agree to show our goods and try to
influence sales among friends we will send post-paid two full size Ladies'
Gossamer Rubber Waterproof Garments as samples, provided you cut this out
and return with 25 cts,. to pay cost, postage, etc.

EMPIRE MFG. CO. Williamsburg. N. Y.



Valuable Farm of 340 acres in Wisconsin _to exchange for city property_.
Beautiful situation on bank of lake. Fine hunting and fishing, suitable
for Summer resort. 100 rods from village and railway station. 100 acres
under cultivation. Good buildings. Milwaukee or Chicago property
preferred.

K., care of LORD & THOMAS.



STRAWBERRIES

And other Small fruit plants a specialty. Catalogues free on application.
Address, PHIL. STRUBLER, Naperville, Du Page County, Ill.



ROOT GRAFTS

100,000 Best Varieties for the Northwest. In lots from 1,000 upward to
suit planter, at $10 to $15 per thousand. Now ready. Send for list.

J. C. PLUMB & SON, Milton, Wis.



Silver Globe Onion Seed.

Send in your order for a supply of GENUINE SILVER GLOBE ONION SEED.
Guaranteed pure, at $2.50 per lb. We have a sample of the Onion at our
store! WATTS & WAGNER 128 S. Water St., Chicago.



FREE

40 Extra Large Cards, Imported designs, name on 10 cts, 10 pks. and 1
Lady's Velvet Purse or Gent's Pen Knife 2 blades, for $1.

ACME CARD FACTORY, Clintonville, Ct.



SILKS

Plushes and Brocade Velvets for CRAZY PATCHWORK. Send for 50c. or $1
package.

Empire Silk Works, Clintonville, Ct.



100 Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, name on, and 2 sheets Scrap Pictures, 20c.
J. B. HUSTED, Nassau, N. Y.



THE BIGGEST THING OUT

ILLUSTRATED BOOK
Sent Free.

(new) E. NASON & CO., 120 Fulton St., New York.




Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are indicated with underscores. Punctuation and hyphenation were
standardized. Missing letters within words were added, e.g. 'wi h' and
't e' were changed to 'with' and 'the,' respectively. Footnote was moved
to the end of the section to which it pertains. Duplicate words, e.g. 'in
in,' were removed.

Substitutions:

  --> for pointing hand graphic.
  'per' for a graphic in the 'Markets' section, e.g. 'lambs $3@8 per head.'

Other corrections:

  'Pagn' to 'Page' ... Table of Contents entry for 'Entomological'
  'Frauk' to 'Frank' ... Frank Dobb's Wives, ... in Table of Contents
  '101' to '191' ... '190-191.' Table of Contents entry for 'Literature'
  'Dolly' to 'Dally' to ... 'Dilly Dally' ... in Table of Contents
  'whcih' to 'which' ... point upon which I beg leave ...
  'pollenation' to 'pollination' ... before pollination
     ... following pollination ...
  'some' to 'same' ... lot received the same treatment ...
  'two' to 'to' ... asking me to buy him ...
  'gurantee' to 'guarantee' ... are a guarantee against them ...
  'Farmr' to 'Farmer' ... Prairie Farmer County Map ...
  'or' to 'of' ... with an ear of corn ...
  '1667' to '1867' ... tariff of 1867 on wools ...
  'earthern' to 'earthen' ... earthen vessels ...
  'of' added ... the inside of the mould ...
  'factorymen' to 'factory men' ... Our factory men will make ...
  'hear.' missing in the original.
  'heigth' to 'height' ... eighteen inches in height,...
  'Holstien' to 'Holstein' ... the famous Holstein cow ...
  'us' to 'up' ... the skins are sewed up so as to ...
  'postcript' to 'postscript' ...contain a postscript which will read ...
  'whlie' to 'while' ... cluster upon them while feeding ...
  'Varities' to 'Varieties' ... New Varieties of Potatoes ...
  'arrangment' to 'arrangement' ... conclude the arrangment ...
  'purfumes' to 'perfumes' ... with certain unctuous perfumes ...
  'Mr.' to 'Mrs.' ... continued Mrs. Gunkettle,...
  'accordi?gly' to 'accordingly' ... a romantic eminence accordingly...
  'ridicuously' to 'ridiculously' ... was simply ridiculously miserable.
  'wabbling' to 'wobbling' ... they get to wobbling,...
  'sutble' to 'subtle' ... Hundreds of subtle maladies ...
  'weightt' to 'weight' ... for weight of 200 lbs ...
  'Recipts' to 'Receipts' ... lambs--Receipts 7,700 head;...





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 12, March
22, 1884, by Various

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