GLEANINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1501, 21 August 1880, Page 7

GLEANINGS.

Always feed well, but do net overfeed. Don't spoil your best cattle by overfeeding, in order to compete for premiums. For greasing waggons use castor oil in summer and sperm oil in winter. When the oil is sticky clean with turpentine. If the litter is cut into 3-inoh lengths, or even smaller, it will hold more moieture, will make better and finer manure, and will keep the animals cleaner than long litter. t By leaving the implements and maohines in the field, to be alternately roasted in the sun and soaked in the raiu,!or to be covered with dust in an open shed, their useful life is reduoed one half. Kerosene will kill the woolly aphiß. £400 will hardly stock a 100-aore farm with all the needed implements. These will be used up in ten years even with the most careful management, so that the annual cost will be at least £20. An English writer in the Gardener's Ohroniole mentions a pea-fowl that attained the age of twenty -one years. Another made a nest on the side of a haystack, and brought down the young on her baok. , , . Apple seed sown in the fall where a hedge is desired, in four or five yeara form an impregnable hedge. They should be clipped tack two or three times with a knife or hedge shears to grow low and stooky. # One acre of geraniums in France, Bay 16,000 plants, will yield 40,000 pounds of leaves, produoing two ounces of distilled otto per hundred weight, whioh ai $1. 25 per onnce gives a value of §1000 as the total yield. The Los Angeleß Journal speaks of a Cloth of Gold rose which measured 15£ inches in circumference. The San Diego News replied that on Dr Port's place in that oity there was one rose 16J inches, and another 19| inches around. Two hundred and fifty horses and males are employed in the field every day, oh the Eanoho Ohioo, Butte county, ploughing, Bowing, and harrowing. Ten days more and the crop will be all in. , Crushed bones and oyster shells are very good to keep poultry in health, and to supply lime for making shell in laying hens. It is estimated that there are from 484,000,000 to 600,000,000 sheep in the world, or, at the lowest estimate, 320,833 miles of sheep, if strung along, one olosely followingithe other— or nearly enough to encirole the earth 13 times. If hens get into the habit of eating eggs, take enough bran and corn-meal of equal parts for one feeding, and enough vinegar warmed to make the meal wet enough for the hens to eat. Mix together and feed it to the hens. Repeat this once the same day. Diluted carbolic acid is a complete < exterminator of insects infesting crops, and it should be used in preference to Paris green. But it is destructive to plant life unless it is sufficiently diluted with water— one pint of carbolic acid to 100 quarts of water. . The quantity of timber required for a post-and-rail fence— with post 7 feet 4 inches and 7 feet long; three rails 5x2 inches, and eight panels to the chain— is 300 superficial feet per chain. The quantity required for a stake and batten fence, allowing for 18 inches lap to eaoh batten is 200 superficial feet. The crocus, hyacinth, daffodil, or jonquil, and anemone will shortly be in bloom. These may be followed by the portulaca, adonis, pansies, and primroses. After these there is a rapid succession of herbaoeous perrenials. The moat prominent violets are the cernlea plena, or double blue, and the Neapolitan ; this last is muoh larger than any of the others, of a beautiful lilac shade, and very; finely perfumed. Besides these there are the white and rose-tinted varieties, both single and double. To raise fine calves I prefer to have them dropped in the fall, and leave them suck their mothers through the winter, weaning them when the grass is fine. By doing bo they get a fine start for the second winter. After weaning, feed them regularly with oats, bran, and cornmeal, mixed in equal parts. If milk is your object, you can wean them at two weeks old, or when the cow's udder is all |right give the oalf new milk the fir3t month after that. Farmers who use 12 or 15 loads of manure to the aore and expeot to raise a good orop would be astonished to study the wayß of market gardeners. What would they say to the application of over £100 worth of horse manure to a single acre? A large expenditure on manure per acre is a common thing among market gardeners and they find it pays. ■ If you want the Btrawberry bed that has borne you a good orop one season to bear well the next year, you must work it out thoroughly and manure well as soon as ib is through bearing. Don't put it off until the bed is full of weeds aud grass. First plough or spade the ground between the rows, cutting tho rows down narrower ; then work the rows out well with a fork potato digger, and Bcatter in them a good quantity of well-rotted compost, guano, or poudrette. It is a good plan to draw f reßh earth in among the plants. „ Upon a visit once to tho farm of Mr Crmkshank, Aberdeenßhire, Scotland, the great breeder of Shorthorn cattle, I observed that all i the urine from the cattle aud horses, as also the

(framings from the manure, were conveyed into a large cistern, in which wad plaoed a pump ; adjacent to this pump all the road sorapingß, leaf mould, and cleanings of ditohes, were brought and plaoed in a pit, and the contents of the cistern pumped upon the mass. Mr Cruikshank told me this was the oheapest and most effaotive fertilizer that he could get for applying as a top dressing to his meadows.